A overvalued codesign

"When I was sixteen I was the ecstatic recipient of a model remote-control car for Christmas. It was the Bigwig model from the popular car kit manufacturer Tamiya and required me to build the car myself from the box of springs, sprockets, wires, servos and other bits that would finally form the model car. The model took me over two months to build (and rebuild after driving a partially built prototype into my parent’s radiator) but was finally ready. My pride in the car was immense and I proudly presented it to my parents, my friends and my relatives; my pride far outweighed what I would have felt if I’d instead received a pre-built, professionally-built version of the same model. The question is was my car actually a better end product or was it just my perception of its value that was different?"  (PM Davies, design-thinkers)

In the blog design-thinkers, <http://www.design-thinkers.co.uk>, PM Davies told us about the experience of Dan Ariely, behavioural economist at Duke University, to test until the end user tends to overvalue products that have participated in its creation as codesigner. A group of participants were asked to build an origami object from instructions and then asked to bid an amount they were willing to pay for their creation. On average, the creators of the objects said they’d be willing to pay 23 cents. However, when people outside of the experiment were asked to similarly bid on the paper creations the average bid was 5 cents.  In an extension to the study origami experts were asked to create the same models and again external people were asked to bid how much they would pay for the creation. In this case the average bid rose to 27 cents. Then from his research he concludes that  "people involved in the process of creation had a substantial bias when evaluating   their own work".   Finally PM Davies tells us that "bringing people into the process will make them more favourable to the proposal, but it doesn't mean actually make the proposal better.So as a persuasion  technique co-design is a valid tool, but it may not produce a better outcome."

Based on this study, if by one hand for the general market codesign may prove to be not so interesting because in some cases do not produce products with such quality as one composed entirely by a specialist; when it comes to the specific groups codesign can be a great tool for attraction,  causing the participants involved and be captivated in a much more efficient the process of creation and the end result.
Since the goal of this project is make that the kids are more involved and participating in the creative process co-design fits as an ideal tool to achieve the success of the new proposal.