1981-1986. Nordic cooperation aimed to explore 'work-oriented' (cf. Ehn, 1988) design, the idea that design should reflect actual work practice rather than supplant it, which at the time was a new idea. The project was a union-driven reaction against earlier attempts to deskill and threaten the position of the graphic workers at the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The project involved a close co-operation of the graphic workers, their trade unions, computer scientists, and product designers. In order to bridge understanding as well as incorporate the non-designers into the decision-making process, a number of participative methods were used, such as mock-ups, prototypes, and design games.

Politically, the goal was to strengthen labour in the labour vs. capital conflict by leveraging workers knowledge about their own work to build tools that supported them Bjerknes, Bratteteig, 1995. Computers allow workers to take control of their work by requiring their specialized, professional knowledge.

Outcomes. Despite developing a requirements specification for a pilot system, the product never made it to market as the vendor ran out of capital Ehn, 1989. Useful ideas to come from the project are the tool perspective and design by doing approach.

Criticism. Bjerknes, Bratteteig, 1995 criticize that the UTOPIA project benefited the graphic workers to the dirth of other unskilled labourers at the newspaper. As such, it failed to take into account all stakeholders, and thus failed to introduce workplace democracy.

An key project of the collective systems approach.

People

• Pelle Ehn
• Dan Sjögren
• Yngve Sundblad

References

• UTOPIA, 1981
• UTOPIA, 1985
• Ehn, 1989
• Bødker, Ehn, Kammersgaard, Kyng, Sundblad, 1987
• Bødker, Ehn, Sjögren, Sundblad, 2000