Collaborative design exploration: envisioning future practices with make tools

We have seen a growing interest in user-centred approaches and methods to facilitate collaboration between different stakeholders and potential users in the design process. More discussion however is needed on the designer's role as facilitator and how co-design material can be transformed into design solutions. This paper describes how design opportunities for information and communication technologies were envisioned together with ageing workers in the midst of their work activities. 'Make Tools' were used to amplify ageing workers' creativity and to enable the enactment of use scenarios. The paper also discusses the designers' role in co-design and presents how generated ideas and scenarios were turned into design material in the project, named Active@work.