Analyzing co-design of agroecology-oriented cropping systems: lessons to build design-support tools

If the challenges involved in agroecological transition are to be addressed, cropping systems (CS) need to be changed profoundly, which in turn requires innovative design adapted to local conditions. This is however by no means an easy task since such design activity requires extensive knowledge on objects and processes rarely studied until now, most of which is distributed among numerous stakeholders. Since the 2000s, research on design in agriculture has aimed at developing participatory methods to support on-farm design of new systems, but few studies have focused on the elaboration of design-support tools. With a view to defining the features of tools intended to support the design of agroecology-oriented cropping systems, ergonomists recommended an analysis of the activities of the future users of these tools in their real work situations. We started out by implementing a diagnosis of use situations, based on observations of real collective design activities. To this end, we took part in six design workshops, which differed in terms of goals and of designers participating (i.e., farmers, advisors, students, or scientists). We first identified the diversity of features of these design situations, and then analyzed three processes across the design workshops: (i) the reformulation of the design goal; (ii) the large exploration of candidate solutions; and (iii) the local adaptation of these solutions while anticipating the on-field implementation. Here, we show, for the first time, the type of reasonings and knowledge that designers and facilitators displayed and used throughout the agroecological cropping system design process. We identify the features that future design-support tools should have to guide co-designers of agroecological CS. Such tools should promote several types of design reasoning and allow the development of external representations of the object under design. Our results provide operational guidelines for the elaboration of new design-support tools.