Abstract
This thesis presents findings on how to facilitate a design process with people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID), utilizing already existing practices, and proxies’ knowledge in facilitating the inclusion of people with ID into design-making. With the overarching goal of exploring possibilities for design with people with ID—effectively seeking to sharing of power by utilizing a Participatory Design (PD) framework—I present a long-term PD process that initially investigates how an ethnographically inspired immersion into the context might benefit a later facilitation for the inclusion of people with Intellectual Disabilities and their proxies into design-making. In the initial inquiry stages of design, I conducted a long term ethnographically inspired immersion into an activity center for adults with ID, which led to two implications for a future design process. The making stages should facilitate for care workers to facilitate their own participation, and, it should build the process on already established forms of mutual learning and practice. In combination with techniques for generating design ideas, these implications led to initial stages of a long-term PD process where two main implications surged. When designing with people with ID and their proxies, the PD process should enable appropriate proxies to facilitate the inclusion of the people with ID into design-making activities. Moreover, the inclusion of people with ID, by the proxies, lets people with ID transcend from informants to acknowledged and legitimate participants, sharing in the decision-making power of any design-making stage. While this thesis mainly seeks to contribute to design with people with ID—some of the underlying values and ways of approaching design with people with vulnerable agency, hopefully, make it applicable to a broader audience.