The arising of new technologies ranging from smartphones to social networks is constantly increasing interactions between people. In the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) community, adapting technology to human nature is the key concern of User-Centered Design (UCD). However, UCD tends to neglect the emerging social dimension of technology: users are consulted in the design process, but they do not have any direct involvement or creative control over the developed technological solutions. On the other hand, the collaborative and social nature of the design process is getting increasingly explicit in the Product Design community, where well-established participatory approaches are applied to involve stakeholders, designers, and end-users in the creative process of new products. In this paper, we first provide a deep analysis of the state of the art of participatory approaches in the research literature. Then, we investigate how their integration with UCD leads not only to empower the role of end-users as active collaborators of designers towards a more democratic crowd-based UCD process, but also to create innovation in the design process. We advocate that such innovation can be obtained by giving the right voice not only to the users who reach consensus in the design process but also to the marginals. We provide an explorative model, some experiments, and a sketch of the user interface to support our claim.

(2019). Computational by Design, towards a co-designed material culture. A design tool. The Design Journal: Vol. 22, Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank, pp. 1235-1248.

Digital Fabrication promises to revolutionize manufacturing, bringing both economic, social and environmental benefits. Combined with Computational Co-Design it can raise the creative potential of both designers and users. However, today the productive use of Digital Fabrication and Computational Design requires significant effort and specialised know-how, so valorising these practices calls for the identification of the application fields that benefit the most from them. This paper presents a tool for helping the discovery of design opportunities across comprehensive, ramified lists of product categories, where designers can identify possible points of intervention. The web-based tool allows the rapid evaluation of numerous product categories according to an extendable set of factors and inspiring questions related to the necessity of personalization, aiming to stimulate designers to consider unexpected frontiers of innovation. Beyond the scope of the research project, this tool has the potential to assist designers in finding applications also for other emerging technologies in a structured and scalable way.

Advancing production systems technology necessitates redefined assessment methods across production stages to address sustainability needs, requiring vast, updated data on material and process impacts. European directives, including the Circular Economy Action Plan, promote waste minimization and resource optimization through fundamental changes in design practices, positioning designers as primary orchestrators of circular material flows. This MICS Project 1.07 research investigates how digital platforms enable designers to coordinate circular solutions in Italy's furniture sector through transparent material data exchange. The study develops an integrated system connecting designers, waste managers, and manufacturers to facilitate circular material flows and comprehensive design processes for circular material applications. The research reveals complex hybrid networks where organizations critically shift between roles as waste producers, material processors, and end-users. Digital solutions address these challenges through AI-driven material analysis, real-time supply chain information, and seamless design process integration. Designers with comprehensive material data can achieve more impactful design toward waste reduction while identifying new market opportunities through by-product valorization. The platform architecture features dual access through web portals and CAD plug-ins, enabling both material exploration and direct design workflow integration. The projects and its insights foresee designers as essential bridges between creative innovation and sustainable production implementation, providing a replicable model for sectors beyond furniture manufacturing.