Sharing & Cooperativism:Designing For Economies

Recent work on sharing and cooperativism has helped widen our understanding of the emerging systems for exchanges, interactions, and relationships beyond mainstream economic models, in particu- lar through studying local cooperatives and their sharing practices across various domains. These efforts also indicate that design has the potential to shape our engagements with the global political economy. However, so far, there are few design resources tailored for exploring and further developing design insights from empirical and conceptual research on sharing and cooperativism. Therefore, we invite the community to discuss the role of design in relation to economies of sharing and cooperativism. In this workshop, we will gather a diverse group of scholars, designers, and activists to think together how designs for sustainable economies can be created and circulated across cooperatives and platforms, with the aim to springboard social and economic aspects of sharing cultures

Mapping the landscape of sharing and cooperativism for design research and practice

Emerging studies of local cooperatives, their sharing practices, and the use of platforms for cooperation call for specific designs and design guidelines to support the endurance and growth of a community-oriented col- laborative economy. These efforts also indicate that design has the potential to shape cooperative engagements. However, to-date, only a few design resources are tailored for exploring and further developing design insights from empirical and conceptual research on sharing and cooperativism. To bridge this gap, we report on an interna- tional workshop that included a diverse group of scholars, designers, and activists. During the workshop, we aimed to unpack the role of design regarding sharing and cooperativism. Through the synthesis of workshop outcomes, we present new insights pointing towards the development an ecosystemic approach in design for cooperativism. We call on designers to (1) proactively adopt design goals that focus on ecosystemic design and tools; (2) be inclu- sive, equitable, and justice-oriented to ensure solidarity and collectivism; and (3) rethink terms such as, currency and data while designing for cooperativism in their projects. In this chapter, we conceptualise and discuss the key ideas from the workshop highlighting potential implications for design research and practice

Setting up and Running a Sharing Service: an Organisational Perspective

Enabled by web and mobile technologies, there has been an explosion of interest in the sharing economy and peer-to-peer exchange, with much high profile attention given to monetised exchanges such as in AirBnB and Uber. However there are also many other sharing initiatives, such as time banking, that focus on smaller, more local communities and do not involve monetisation of exchanges. While there is a growing body of literature elaborating participation and motivation in sharing services as well as analysing organisers’ roles, little is discussed about the work involved in the day-to-day organisation and management of such services. In this paper we report on an interview study with ten participants discussing five different sharing systems from three different countries. A qualitative thematic analysis of the data points to significant on-going effort reported by all to establish, maintain and grow a service, not only focussing on its practical aspects but also on growing a community and building trust. How they engaged in this practical work though was not so much shaped by the service model (time banking, LETS and so on) but on a complex relationship between their funding model, the service goal and whether it was a top-down or bottom-up initiative. These findings have implications for the design of technical platforms to support services, not just in elaborating a range of possible tasks to be supported but also in where and how it needs to be tailorable to certain needs, how adaptive it is to different service models and how it facilitates monitoring and reporting duties for organisers

Reframing design culture and aging

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. --- Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor </jats:p