Design in the Age of Prosumption: The Craft of Design after the Object

Abstract

This article establishes a taxonomy of consumer response to the possibility of becoming a producing consumer (prosumer), through an analysis of the prosumer's relationship to the tools and materials that facilitate production. I have developed three characterizations of the prosumer dependent on how the tools, materials, and advice provided by companies who incite consumer creativity are used: the prosumer who follows the rules; those who reject such provision and pursue self-sufficiency; and the prosumer who adapts tools and materials in processes of ad hoc bricolage. This emphasis on how prosumers harness their potential productivity will help us challenge boisterous claims of consumer sovereignty in light of increasingly accessible and powerful technologies, which have proliferated since Alvin Toffler's first enthusiastic assessment of the prosumer in The Third Wave (1980). With reference to case studies from a broad geographical and chronological range, my intention is to develop characterizations that help designers and theorists navigate the complex impact of the consumer-as-designer today, avoiding both denigration of the consumer as naive and unskilled, or their promulgation as the savior of modern production.

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