Who knows best: On Users Participation in Residential Design

When we talked about the participation of users in the design process. It reminds me of the previous internship experiences. It is interesting that in my past three internship experiences, one in China,  two in the united states, the projects that I participated in were all dealt with residential design. And in these three different internship, I had different experiences that how users participated in the design process.

The first internship project is in a very large design institute in my hometown, working on a multi-family apartment complex which served for middle-class family in China. When I assisted the project architect in drawings,  I found the layout of the floor plan the material using of the façades are like many other apartment complex in the current real estate market. This is a stereotypical apartment product. The users are not participate directly in the design process, but their needs and preference have been studied by statistics.  The developer have made thoroughly research on the individual income of neighboring area, the family structure(right now majorly a family of 5 of family of 4),  so when they got the conclusion, they could just grab the type of floor plan layout which they used successfully several times in other projects before, make minor changes of some details, then the design could go to the next level. And the users who are going to buy the apartment at last are always satisfied at last.

The second internship experience is in a small design office skilled in high-end single family residential projects in Greenwich, CT.  While in the office, I could see client are always talking with the project architects in the conference room every two weeks, or the architects went out with the drawing to talk with client. In this case, architects and users have direct communication, and users have much more participation than any other project.  Their opinion are highly valued and preferred in the design process. The project is like a customized outfit, architects are tailors, making adjustments to whatever opinions that clients come up with to make sure that fit clients' need and preference. That's why clients are always willing to pay a large amount of their money to the designers.

The third experience is in a small civic design office attached to city government. I was in charge of proposing the conceptual design of an affordable housing project under the guidance of director and later the project will be presented  to mayor.  In this case, I never had a chance to speak with the users.  Users are not participated I this design process. Since it's a conceptual design, so we don't know if the users like it or not. But according to the  news that my director sent me, the proposal received a good feedback the public through the media.

From these three different internship experiences, I feel different degree that users participate in the project (muchly depends on how much they pay to the designer).  Aravena put up the concept of "participatory design" and mentioned" You 're not asking  people for the answers. what we are trying to identify what is the problem"

Maybe it's okay that architects could also have a very cool and successful design even if they don't have a direct user participation in the design process, since sometimes it's kind of hard for users to speak out what they actually need. However, I still believe, it is engaging users in the design process that could make the design itself distinctive from other project, otherwise design merely by architects' assumption would make the design lose it identity.