Week 05 Design Probes & Contextmapping

Lecture 5

Design Probes & Contextmapping

UX Prototyping / IID 2015 Spring Class hours : Tuesday 2 pm – 6 pm Lecture room : International Campus Veritas Hall B320 31st March

The Last Week’s Homework

Lecture #5 IID_UX Prototyping 2

Persona Design Complete Probe Toolkits

Readings And Critiques

(Assign

Presenters for Each Paper)

1 2 3

Your Blog Post #8 - Find an

appropriate persona result form and complete your persona design exercise.

Your Blog Post #9 - Complete your Cultural

Package Toolkit Design

- Upload the images

Your Blog Post #10 - Summarize the papers - Add your critiques for each

papers

Reading List

• Week 05 Reading

– Visser, F.S., (2005) "Contextmapping: experiences from practice,"

CoDesign, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.119 – 149.

– Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders & Pieter Jan Stappers (2014) “Probes, toolkits and

prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning,” CoDesign, Vol.10,

No.1, pp.5-14.


To Do List for Today

• Seminar

– Core Research Ideas : Bring out some keywords or related technological

trends, backgrounds, and concerns

– Research Questions : What they investigated

– Key theories : Some they referred and some they developed by their own

– Method : How they proved

– Results & Findings : What they learned from the study


To Do List for Today

• Present your system concept statements (10 Minutes of Warm-up discussion, and Be Ready)

– Collected Pinterest Images/Make Group Pinboards

• Users

• Objects

• Interactions

– Overview

• Team Title

• The Revised System Concept Statement (especially the team that changed its project)

– 5 components of a system concept statement

• Project Title

• Users

• Critical Functions

• System Goals

• Target UX (emotional/social/cultural)


Exercise 7-1: Creating a User Persona for Your System

• Goal

– Get some experience at writing a persona.

• Activities

– Select an important work role within your system. At least one user class for this work

role must be very broad, with the user population coming from a large and diverse group,

such as the general public.

– Using your user-related contextual data, create a persona, give it a name, and get a

photo to go with it.

– Write the text for the persona description.

• Deliverables

– One- or two-page persona write-up

• Schedule

– You should be able to do what you need to learn from this in about an hour.


CULTURAL PROBES Studio Workshop #2


“When reason is away, smiles will play.” - Paul Eluard and Benjamin Péret

IID_UX Prototyping 8 Lecture #5

Definition

• Probes

– Collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from

people – not comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary

clues about their lives and thoughts.

– It’s an approach that values uncertainty, play, exploration, and subjective

interpretation as ways of dealing with those limits.

– Provides an example of how we use this purposely uncontrolled and

uncontrollable approach to help us understand design domain in new

ways


Project Brief

• European Union–funded research

project looking at novel interaction

techniques to increase the

presence of the elderly in their

local communities.


Project Outline

• The probes were part of a strategy of pursuing experimental design in

a responsive way.

• They address a common dilemma in developing projects for unfamiliar

groups.

• Understanding the local cultures was necessary so that our designs

wouldn’t seem irrelevant or arrogant, but we didn’t want the groups to

constrain our designs unduly by focusing on needs or desires they

already understood.

• We wanted to lead a discussion with the groups toward unexpected

ideas, but we didn’t want to dominate it. IID_UX Prototyping 11 Lecture #5

Package

IID_UX Prototyping 12

• The cultural probes—these

packages of maps, postcards, and

other materials—were designed to

provoke inspirational responses from

elderly people in diverse

communities.

• Like astronomic or surgical probes,

we left them behind when we had

gone and waited for them to return

fragmentary data over time.

Lecture #5

Postcard

IID_UX Prototyping 13

• Postcards are an attractive medium for asking these

sorts of questions because of their connotations as an

informal, friendly mode of communication.

• Unlike formal questionnaires, the postcards

encouraged questions to be approached casually,

which was underlined by pre-addressing and

stamping them for separate return.

• Postcard Questions

– Please tell us a piece of advice or insight that has been

important to you.

– What do you dislike about Peccioli?

– What place does art have in your life?

– Tell us about your favorite device.

Lecture #5

Map

• Participants were also asked to

mark zones on local maps,

showing us where, for instance,

– They would go to meet people

– They would go to be alone

– They liked to daydream

– They would like to go but can’t


Camera

• Picture Assignments

– Your home

– What you will wear today

– The first person you see today

– Something desirable

– Something boring

• About half the pictures were unassigned,

and the elders were asked to photograph

whatever they wanted to show us before

mailing the camera back to us.


Photo Album and Media Diary

• The last two items in the probes

were in the form of small booklets.

The first was a photo album, which

requesting the elders to “use 6 to 10

pictures to tell us your story.”

• When questioned, we encouraged

participants to use photos of the past,

their families, their current lives, or

anything they found meaningful.


On Technology

• Unlike most design, we don’t focus on commercial products, but on

new understandings of technology.

• This allows us—even requires us—to be speculative in our designs,

as trying to extend the boundaries of current technologies demands

that we explore functions, experiences, and cultural placements quite

outside the norm.


Newness

• Instead of designing solutions for user needs, then, we work to

provide opportunities to discover new pleasures, new forms of

sociability, and new cultural forms.

• We often act as provocateurs through our designs, trying to shift

current perceptions of technology functionally, aesthetically, culturally,

and even politically.


CONTEXTMAPPING : EXPERIENCE FROM PRACTICE

Studio Workshop #3


Visser, F. S., et al. (2006) CoDesign Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 119-149.

Introduction

• Information about the contexts

– In combination with information about the company (e.g. marketing, production

capabilities) and about the skills of the design team (multidisciplinary: professional

designers, engineers, usability professionals) the contexts of product use form an

innovative base for human-centred design (Sanders and Dandavate, 1999).

• Participatory Design

– users and other stakeholders participate in the design process to ensure that the

resulting designs fit the way people will actually use the product in their own lives.

• Cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne and Pacenti, 1999) and generative techniques

(Sanders, 2001)

– aim to create context awareness by eliciting emotional responses from the participants.


Basic Principles

• The definition of context

– ‘the environment of human-computer interaction’

– We use the term context to refer to ‘all factors that influence the

experience of a product use’.

– Studying the context of product use helps designers to gain empathy with

users, to avoid fixation on preset assumptions about the user or the

product, and to create innovative concepts on how a product can be

experienced.


Basic Principles

• Context vs. Experience

– A context has components of time and space, whereas experience

always occurs in the context of time.

– An experience is a subjective event, felt only by the person who has the

experience.

– An experience can be ephemeral, i.e., lasting only for the moment. It is the

point where memory and imagination meet. A basic mechanism in

generative techniques is to let people construct a view on the context, by

calling up their memories of the past and by eliciting their dreams of the

future.


Basic Principles


Figure 2. The experience domain (adapted from Sanders, 2001).

Basic Principles


Figure 3. Different levels of knowledge about experience are accessed by different techniques.

The contextmapping process


Figure 4. Procedure of a contextmapping study.


• Preparation

– The formulation of goals, planning, selecting participants, choosing techniques

• Sensitization

– Sensitizing is a process where participants are triggered, encouraged and

motivated to think, reflect, wonder and explore aspects of their personal

context in their own time and environment.

• Sessions

– a meeting in which participants do generative exercises.

– Participants receive instructions and sets of expressive components, and

create artefacts that express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas.



• Analysis

– The artefacts created by the participants contain many stories and anecdotes related to

the topic.

– The stories and anecdotes are usually recorded on video and audio.

– Transcriptions of the verbal protocol are also made.

– The study is not meant to support or reject existing hypotheses, but to explore the

context, uncover unexpected directions, and widen the view of the design team.

• Communication

– The final step is bringing the results to the design process.

– Techniques that are more interactive, such as workshops, cardsets, and persona

displays can be used to enhance the design team’s understanding for and empathy with

users.


Preparing the study

• Goal statements

– how to set-up exercises for the sensitizing package and for the sessions,

and how to analyse and communicate the findings.

• Preliminary mapping

• Participant selection

• Sensitization

– Disposable camera

– Workbook

– Diary

– Postcards


Preparing the study

• Creation of sensitizing packages

– The design of the sensitizing package is playful and professional at the same time.

– The subject of the sensitizing package is usually broader than the subject covered in the

sessions.

– The sensitizing package stimulates participants to reflect on a daily pattern over a few

days, and in this way they will slowly become more aware about their experiences. The

diary exercise is one way of doing this. Taking photos over a number of days is another

way.

– The design of the sensitizing materials invites participants to write their ideas or

impromptu comments.

– Working on the sensitizing packages should require people no more than five to ten

minutes per day (often they will do a lot more, though).


Sessions with Users


time action checklist

5 min Introduction Explaining set up session, goal and that they are experts on their own experiences

5 min Warm-up Introduction of participants by explaining their bunches of keys

Exercise 1: collage of being admitted

Use these pictures and words to express how you feel about being admitted in the broadest sense

20 min ‘‘Make’’ part

20 min ‘‘Say’’ part Present collage

10 min Discussion Reaction on each other’ stories

5 min break

Exercise 2: draw ideal ritual Make a drawing (or collage) to express your ideal ritual of being admitted in a building in the future (2050). Express how it feels

20 min ‘‘Make’’ part

20 min ‘‘Say’’ part Present drawing

20 min Discussion Reaction on each other’ stories

20 min Remain talking

Table 2. Timetable used for group sessions in the high security admittance project

Sessions with Users


Figure 7. Mapping exercise of a routine in your kitchen.

Communicating the knowledge


Figure 8. A raw data compilation: Part of a collage representing the kitchen experience of one of the participants (from van Beusekom, 2005). Parts of the actual data, photos of the sensitizing package and anecdotes of the transcript are combined to present the context of the kitchen for each participant.

The different roles of the researcher, designer, and user


Figure 9. The involvement of the stakeholders varies through the stages of the study.

PROBES, TOOLKITS AND PROTOTYPES: THREE APPROACHES TO MAKING IN CODESIGNING

Studio Workshop #3


Sanders, E. B.-N., et al. (2014) CoDesign Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 5-14.

Introduction

• The codesign community

– Design research literature in the codesign community

• In 1999, the seminal papers on cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti 1999) and

generative toolkits (Sanders 1999) only sketched principles and examples. In 2005, the

context mapping paper (Sleeswijk Visser et al. 2005),

– Creative acts of making: designers creating probe packages, respondents creating

interpretations of its ambiguous questions and answering them, design researchers

making generative toolkits, participants using these toolkits to make expressive artefacts

and discussing those, and codesigners creating and evaluating prototypes, often in

iterative cycles.

– The act of making here is not just a performative act of reproduction, but a creative act

which involves construction and transformation of meaning, by any or all the people just

mentioned, and in all those activities.


The changing role of making in the design process

• Today making has become an activity that both designers and codesigners

can engage in during all phases of the process.

• In research through design, prototypes can play a number of roles

– Prototypes evoke a focused discussion in a team, because the phenomenon is

‘on the table’.

– Prototypes allow testing of a hypothesis.

– Prototypes confront theories, because instantiating one typically forces those

involved to consider several overlapping perspectives/theories/frames.

– Prototypes confront the world, because the theory is not hidden in abstraction.

– A prototype can change the world, because in interventions it allows people to

experience a situation that did not exist before.


Probes, toolkits and prototypes


Figure 1. Making, telling, and enacting as complementary, connected activities in codesigning. Source: From Brandt, Binder and Sanders (2012).



Figure 2. The map of design research, showing different approaches laid along two axes: role of the user (horizontal), and approach of the research (vertical). Source: From Sanders and Stappers (2008).



Probes Toolkits Prototypes

What is made?

Probes are materials that have been designed to provoke or elicit response. For example, a postcard without a message.

Toolkits (made up of a variety of components) are specifically confirmed for each project/domain. People use the toolkit components to make artefacts about or for the future.

Prototypes are physical manifestations of ideas or concepts. They range from rough (giving the overall idea only) to finished (resembling the actual end result).

Why? Designers find inspiration in users’ reactions to their suggestions.

To give non-designers a means with which to participate as codesigners in the design process.

To give form to an idea, and to explore technical and social feasibility.

What is it made out of?

Probes can take on a wide variety of forms such as diaries, workbooks, cameras with instructions, games, etc.

Toolkits are made of 2D or 3D components such as pictures, words, phrases, blocks, shapes, buttons, pipe cleaners, wires, etc.

Prototypes can be made from a very wide array of materials including clay, foam, wood, plastic, simple digital and electronic elements.

Who conceives? Designers create the probes and send them to end-users and other stakeholders, often with little or no guidance of how the end-users should treat them.

Designers and researchers make the toolkits and give them to others to use to make artefacts. The process is often facilitated or guided.

Codesigners create the prototypes to envision their ideas and to display and to get feedback on these ideas from other stakeholders.

Who uses? End-users and other stakeholders individually complete the probes, returning them to the person who sent them out.

End-users and other stakeholders use them to make artefacts about or for the future. Toolkits work with both individuals and small groups.

Designers use the prototypes as design tools. End-users may use the prototypes during evaluative research events.

Table 1. A comparison of the three approaches to making.



Figure 3. The original framework: Three approaches to making are located along a timeline of the design process.

The phases of making along the design process


Figure 4. Phases along a timeline of the design process; the first dot indicates the determination of the design opportunity and the second dot represents the finished ‘product’.

The phases of making along the design process


Design research Pre-design and post-design Generative Evaluative

Purpose To understand people’s experiences in the context of their lives: past, present and future dreams To prepare people to participate in codesigning

To produce ideas, insights and concepts that may then be designed and developed What will be useful? Usable? Desirable?

To assess, formatively or summatively, the effect or the effectiveness of products, spaces, systems or services Is it useful? Usable? Desirable?

Results Empathy with people Creative codesigners

Opportunities for future scenarios of use Exploration of the design space

Identification of problems Measurement of effectiveness

Orientation Past, present and future Future Present and near future

Table 2. The research phases compared.

The revised framework


Figure 5. The revised framework: three approaches to making are positioned relative to the mindsets and phases in the design process.

Approaches to making in different time frames


Probes Toolkits Prototypes

The world as it is

Cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti 1999) Design probes (Mattelma¨ki 2005)

Toolkits for understanding experience: a day-in-thelife exercise

Usability testing of an incrementally improved redesign

The near future Design Noir (Dunne and Raby 2001)

Toolkits for exploring future experience: my-ideal-future-product exercise

Usability/field testing of a radical new product

The speculative future

Diegetic prototypes (Kirby 2011) Artefacts from the future (WIRED magazine)

Toolkits for experimenting with experience: make-believe role-playing with co-constructed artefacts

Research through Design prototypes (Keller et al. 2009)

Table 3. The three approaches to making are expanding across different time frames.


• Service design

– A vocal upcoming movement that proposes a holistic design method, focusing on touch

points or moments of use.

– Being applied today in industries such as banking, insurance, healthcare and travel

where it often explores interactions with multiple products and/or systems that together

enable a service ecosystem.

– The interest in and growth of service design has been instrumental in expanding the

types, and purposes, of making in the earlier stages of the design process.

– tends to advocate intensive user participation or sometimes codesigning. It has also

added greatly to our repertoire of ways to explore, express and evaluate views on

current experiences and near future ways of living.

– Another important contribution of the service design trend has been the visualisations

(often referred to as service blueprints) that reveal the complex interdependencies that

must be considered in the design of service systems.



• Design fiction

– more recent phenomenon (see Resnick 2011) that describes a form of

codesigning through making.

– lies at the intersection of future studies and design where the time frame of

the future is much longer than what we see in business today.

– Its practitioners/theorists call it ‘materialization of the speculative’. The term

was originally coined by Julian Bleecker (2009) who explains that

“…Design fiction is a hybrid, hands-on practice that operates in a murky middle ground

between ideas and their materialization, and between science fact and science fiction. It is a

way of probing, sketching, and exploring ideas. Through this practice, one bridges imagination

and materialization by modeling, crafting things, telling stories through objects, which are

now effectively conversation pieces in a very real sense.”




Figure 6. Movements of design are emerging across time scales: the world as it is (inner ring), the near future (middle ring) and the speculative future (outer ring).

Next Week Reading List

• Download From YSCEC > User Experience Prototyping > Books &

Papers > Week 06 Reading

– Mark A. Blythe, & Peter C. Wright (2006) "Pastiche scenarios: Fiction as a

resource for user centred design," Interacting with Computers, Volume 18,

Issue 5, pp. 1139–1164.

– Pam Briggs, et. al. (2012) "Invisible Design: Exploring Insights and Ideas

through Ambiguous Film Scenarios," Proceedings of DIS 2012, June 11-15,

2012, Newcastle, UK.

– Mark Blythe (2014) "Research Through Design Fiction: Narrative in Real

and Imaginary Abstracts," Proceedings of CHI 2014, April 26 - May 01 2014,

Toronto.


Homework


Complete Probe Toolkits

Execute Cultural Probe Research &

Report the Results

Readings And Critiques

(Assign

Presenters for Each Paper)

1 2 3

Your Blog Post #9 - Complete your

Cultural Package Toolkit Design

- Upload the images

Your Blog Post #11 - Recruit 5 participants for

each group.

- Collect responses and get returns from the Participants.

- After the team discussion over the package returns, summarize, analyze, and interpret the results.

- Set a contextmapping session plan.

Your Blog Post #12 - Summarize the papers - Add your critiques for each

papers

Submission Due : 11: 59 pm Sun. 5th April

Week 05 Design Probes & Contextmapping

Education

Transcript of Week 05 Design Probes & Contextmapping