Malloy 12 sustainable designs. Another toolmaker is professor of computer science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Gerhard Fischer. In his article, “Couch Potatoes: From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors,� Fisher rethinks media creation. He is interested in inventing the future, a future where tools of expression allow for a collaborative and cross-disciplinary process for invention. In other words, he is interested in creating tools not just for the technocrats but also for all. Within this process, he breaks down the consumer/designer spectrum, looking at roles and involvement of each along the process. Significant in his article is the point that people may want to be designers in a personally meaningful activity where they are forced to be consumers, or they want to be consumers in personally irrelevant activities but are forced to be designers.16 Similarly to Sanders, Fischer looks at why people would want to co-create and at what level. Both agree the process of co-creation allows for user ownership of problems, communities of interest, mutual learning, and power users.17 Though their focuses differ from advertising, their arguments are the same fuel that has compelled recent developments. If Sanders is at one end of the creation process, C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy are at the opposite end, the end-user co-creating meaning. In 2004 they wrote the definitive text, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, which has significantly influenced the business world. They claim companies can no longer act alone, as customers have access to new tools (namely those available through digital media) and are dissatisfied with available choices. In a shift from managing efficiencies to managing experiences, businesses
16
Gerhard Fischer, "Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors." First
Monday 7, no. 12 (2002). firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/objs/index.php/fm/article/view/1010/931 (accessed March 1, 2011). 17
Ibid.