The Co-Design Development as a Process of Translation

The issue of value co-creation can be studied under multiple perspectives both in product and service sector. This paper investigates the emergence of co-design as a specific form of value co-creation, which involves simultaneously product and service dimensions, and emerges trough the interactions between designers and customers. The issue is approached through an Actor-Network Theory perspective, as a mean to investigate the relational ties within the co-design network, analyzing the specific case of one of the most important online co-design community. This study shows that co-design involves both service and product components and emerges as successful story of translation process whose phases of problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilization generate the re-negotiation of traditional identities and roles of designers and customers.