Andrea Gasparini

Design Thinking Methods and Tools for Innovation

Design thinking (DT) is regarded as a system of three overlapping spaces—viability, desirability, and feasibility—where innovation increases when all three perspectives are addressed. Understanding how innovation within teams can be supported by DT methods and tools captivates the interest of business communities. This paper aims to examine how DT methods and tools foster innovation in teams. A case study approach, based on two workshops, examined three DT methods with a software tool. The findings support the use of DT methods and tools as a way of incubating ideas and creating innovative solutions within teams when team collaboration and software limitations are balanced. The paper proposes guidelines for utilizing DT methods and tools in innovation projects.

A Holistic Approach to User Experience in the Context of an Academic Library Interactive System

This paper addresses the impact the user perspective has on an interactive system, when designing for experience. The context is the introduction of a discovery tool in an academic library, where the effects of addressing the users experience (UX) are gathered in the digital and the physical space. How the UX was addressed before the introduction of this new discovery tool and how the users experience was tested afterward, will be discussed. The paper analyzes the results of a multi-folded testing of the discovery tool, including a large survey, focus groups, observations and usability testing. The main focus of this paper is on how the results may support the re-design of this system, and how the library staff made sense of the new insight gained by this approach. This new insight is also a point of entrance to look at those usability and design processes, both intensive and somehow chaotic, that influence the design for the user experiences. This holistic approach will give new insight both to the research community and to the academic libraries.

Mind the Change!: Public Sector as an Arena for User Experience Design

During the last decade, the public sector has undergone radical changes in the way services are delivered to the users. Users are more conscious about their possibility of influencing how services should be. This awareness has stimulated co-operation with designers and developers. At the same time, decreasing funding required new ways to address and re-design services. Public service-providing organizations, such as libraries and museums, have been shown to function well as places to test and implement new services, and also to be able to respond proactively to external inputs. Public institutions have also brought to their arenas new types of services, where, acting as a hub or a living lab, they support hackathons, software carpentry and test labs for new technologies. The workshop will bring researchers and designers together with public servants and share UX design strategies proven applicable in the public sector. The aim is to encourage new ideas concerning collaboration, competencies, design practices and workflows incorporating public services both in digital and physical space.