Can crap design be inclusive? The case for deliberative design

If crap design can be inclusive, what does that mean for what we mean by inclusive design? Starting from this question, raised at Include 2009, the paper tries to reveal the basic questions underneath. Reduced to their general form, these questions are relevant to every activity that has a normative dimension: who is to decide the standards? Should the norms be decided by the best knower or by the people, however ignorant they might be? This leads to two other fundamental questions: what is there to know? And who is the best knower? Together these basic questions make clear that the definitions of inclusive design are underdetermined: just to mention needs of the widest possible audience with the widest range of abilities does not decide the issue about the (missing) link between inclusion and good design. In analysing how this link can be confronted, the paper provides strong arguments for design as a deliberative enterprise involving both designers and the people they design for. It points out that inclusivity and normative objectivity (two prima facie opposed ideals) can be reconciled, by defining the norm of good design in terms of a deliberative cooperation. Key here is that the competence about what is good design is not an exclusive and inquestionable possession of anyone, but arises by deliberative cooperation of designers and people about the issues at stake. Thus, design quality is viewed as a matter of cooperative integraton rather than a matter of convergence of different perspectives: a design is excellent, not when it is appreciated by both the designer and the consumer, but when it is produced by exploiting the information and competences at disposal of the designer and the people s/he designs for in qualified circumstances