Accompaniment in Design Research

Abstract Scholars and practitioners alike have long been concerned with how design might contribute to social and political change. Much of that work has looked at the outcomes of design, the things made by designers. In this paper, we shift the view to look at how we—as design researchers—work with others. We offer the concept and practice of accompaniment to think about and do design research differently, with a focus on the character of the relationship between designers and those they work with.