Claystation: Methodologies for Mass-Participation and User-Generated Content for Design Practice

The trend for co-design, self-design, open-source design and user participation has lacked any investigation of how one might engage large numbers of people in creative activity.

‘Claystation’ is an ongoing project that aims to develop new collaborative design methodologies for design, architecture and the built environment through a series of interactive events and exhibitions at leading institutions, exhibitions and conferences. This has taken the form of strategies that encourage normally passive visitors to exhibitions and trade shows to engage in various kinds of collective creative expression including clay and card modelling, animation and drawing, which are then collated and presented both at the event, and subsequently, in the form of animations.

Ben Hughes

Research Interests

Product design/development, concept, image and its relationship to function. Design against crime, anti-theft bag prototypes. As a director of DTG (Design Transformation Group) I have instigated, designed, curated + organised several events incuding workshops, conference papers, exhibitions. Forthcoming events under the "claystation" series include the Jerwood prize "My Chair" at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, July 2005, Designersblock Frankfurt August 2005, Block Architecture Festival at the Lighthouse, Glasgow October 2005 and Designersblock, London September 2005.

Current Research

All the research is incorporated into the development and design of the cited projects. These have primarily been large commercial products which have involved the development of concept, image and its relation ship to function. The most recent research and product development has been undertaken in the context of the 'Design Against Crime' project in this case applied to the design of a anti-theft bag concepts and prototypes. The results of this research have been exhibited in the UK and more recently in Milan.

• http://www.claystation.org