Catherine Elsen

Is there anything to expect from 3D views in sketching support tools

This paper describes a research project which aims at studying the ergonomic and cognitive value of EsQUIsE, a freehand design environment for architects. This sketch-based modeling software is implemented on a Tablet PC. The EsQUIsE software provides architects with the possibility to generate automatically 3D views from the freehand drawings. The first part of the paper deals with the usability of such a digital environment for sketching, and especially the use of the drawing areas. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the analysis of how 3D views are generated and used for exploring alternative solutions. Although in interviews architects rate 3D highly, in fact they do not produce a large volume of 3D sketches. Issues about visual and spatial reasoning in design are thus highlighted. Finally, the benefit of such a tool for creativity is questioned.

Connections Between the Design Tool, Design Attributes, and User Preferences in Early Stage Design

Gathering user feedback on provisional design concepts early in the design process has the potential to reduce time-to-market and create more satisfying products. Among the parameters that shape user response to a product, this paper investigates how design experts use sketches, physical prototypes, and computer-aided design (CAD) to generate and represent ideas, as well as how these tools are linked to design attributes and multiple measures of design quality. Eighteen expert designers individually addressed a two-hour design task using only sketches, foam prototypes, or CAD. It was found that prototyped designs were generated more quickly than those created using sketches or CAD. Analysis of 406 crowdsourced responses to the resulting designs showed that those created as prototypes were perceived as more novel, more aesthetically pleasing, and more comfortable to use. It was also found that designs perceived as more novel tended to fare poorly on all other measured qualities. Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 3 INTRODUCTION The goal of product design and development is to create products that fulfill user needs so that consumers will desire and purchase them. In early stage design, design teams generate several design alternatives, then select among them to determine one to pursue for further development [1]. A user-centered strategy to help teams select a design direction is to elicit feedback from users and other stakeholders on provisional design concepts. The design team may then incorporate this feedback into future iterations of the design. This phenomenon of obtaining feedback on provisional design representations has become even more prevalent through the rise of online crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, that present consumers with pre-production designs in order to attract financial investment. Low-cost, quick prototypes, known as “minimum viable product” designs, have been embraced by entrepreneurs as a means to pre-validate business ideas with potential customers [2]. A myriad of factors can play into a user’s responses to a provisional design, from the design’s functionality to its visual styling to the way in which a design is presented to the user. This study examines and compares two factors that can influence the way a user evaluates a design. First, this study considers the tools to create a provisional design during the exploratory, generative stage of the design process. A range of design tools may support the development of preliminary concepts, such as 2D sketches, 3D physical prototypes, Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 4 and digital models, and may do so at different levels of fidelity – from rough representations to realistic renderings. Such tools have inherent capabilities and limitations, which means the same concept created using different tools can result in different designs and thereby potentially influence the feedback that users provide. For example, a preliminary design with complex curves that may be relatively fast and easy to sketch or shape from a piece of foam may be challenging to model using CAD. Moreover, the choice of design tool is in tension with the resources required to create the design representation. Generally, the higher the fidelity of the representation, the more skill and time required to create it. Higher fidelity representations may also require that the designer make additional decisions about design details in order to achieve the desired level of representation fidelity. Second, this study examines the attributes of the design itself, which may relate to the design’s functionality, interactions, appearance, and use, among others. Key product attributes are not only what users look for when making a purchase decision, but can characterize what it means to be an innovative product [3]. For example, gas mileage may be the most important attribute to a car buyer, while screen size may be an important determinant to someone selecting a mobile phone. This study investigates the interplay between the tools used by practitioners during preliminary design, a product’s attributes, and user evaluations of a design, and Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 5 aims to uncover significant relationships among these using relative, rather than absolute, comparisons. The following research questions are framed: • How does the choice of design tool impact the rate of idea generation and the total number of ideas produced? • What is the relationship between the choice of design tool and how users evaluate a design based on its qualities? • What is the relationship between a product’s attributes and its perceived qualities? Are certain design attributes more, or less, strongly linked to specific product qualities? • What is the interplay of the tools used to create a preliminary design and the attributes of the resulting designs?

An Anthropo-Based Standpoint on Mediating Objects: Evolution and Extension of Industrial Design Practices

This paper questions the new uses of design tools and representations in the industrial field. A two months in situ observation of real industrial practices shows (i) how strongly CAD (Computer-Aided Design) tools are integrated in work practices, in preliminary design phases as well, and (ii) how design actors sometimes deviate this tool from its initial objectives to use it in complement of sketches’ contributions. A multi-layered study built on an anthropo-based approach helps us to deepen the “mediating objects” analysis. It also suggests considering the complementarities of design tools instead of their differences in order to propose another kind of design support tool.

Representations of sensory experiences in the early phases of architectural design: there is more than meets the eye

In response to questions about designers’ visual way of knowing and working, this article explores how sensory experience is conveyed during the early phases of architectural design. By processing 985 graphic components issued from a three-month ethnographic observation inside an architecture firm, and proposing an original methodology for their analysis, we identify and analyse graphic expressions of sensory-related design intentions. Multi-sensory dimensions of experiencing an architectural artefact, and the way architects deal with users experiencing space differently, are topics also considered in this article. The resulting observations remind us not to mistake apparent lack of graphical clues for lack of sensibility when it comes to addressing sensory experience during architectural design.

What do strokes teach us about collaborative design

Understanding collaborative design goes far beyond analyzing group dynamics, tasks allocations or negotiation during decision-making processes. In this paper, we focused on the collaborative sketching process, during which the intentions of designers are supported by their sketches and by specific strokes.Twelve professional designers attended an experimental design session, where they were asked to express, share, capture or interpret sketches. A qualitative and quantitative fine-grained analysis of strokes teach us(i) how designers tend to deal with representations that are not theirs; (ii) what main graphical key-features constitute the inner nature of the shared information and (iii) how and when can this graphic essence be shared with collaborators.

Co-design in Architectural Practice: Impact of Client Involvement During Self-construction Experiences

This paper investigates how self-construction processes, considered as the utmost form of clients’ involvement in the realm of building a family house, impact clients’ and architects’ interactions. The study of four cases (two involving “traditional” processes, two involving “self-built” processes) and the drawing of Experience Maps for each of them nurture reflections about satisfaction assessment, perceived quality and clients’ integration to the architectural design process (potentially including co-design attitudes).

Bridging Gaps Between Ergonomics and Creative Design: A Pedagogical Experiment

In this paper, we describe a large-scale pedagogical setting involving groups of students from different profiles gathered around a real-scale design project (re-shaping the waiting room of a mental health center). Ergonomics students’ main task is to analyze the needs and real activities of end-users; high school students’ task is to propose inspiring design tracks; interior architecture students’ task is to produce the design project; industrial drafting students’ task is to realize execution plans while construction students’ task is to implement the project on site. This communication more precisely focuses on the role of ergonomists in the setup, describing their intervention and the practical and pedagogical innovations put in place to help them face the various challenges encountered during the project, namely dealing with the temporal constraints of the intervention, documenting and observing a sensitive situation and involving end-users to make them heart of the design process. The paper concludes with feedback gathered from the different stakeholders.

Sustainability of Users’ Commitment to Collaborative Design Tasks: An Exploratory Research

This paper investigates why end-users sometimes find difficult to fully invest themselves in a Living Lab initiative, at least on the long run. The paper builds insights on the basis of users’ feedback about four projects currently managed by the Wallonia e-health Living Lab (WeLL) and paves the way for renewed models of collaboration that could lead to sustainable satisfaction and long-term commitment of end-users.

The impact of expertise on the capture of sketched intentions: perspectives for remote cooperative design

The paper describes the way expertise and field-knowledge can impact the transfer of graphical intentions during architectural cooperative design. The analysis of 28 controlled experiments reveals what matters in transmitting architectural intents and more specifically underlines how novices’ intuitive, deductive processes based on previous and embodied experiences interestingly complement experts’ knowledge of the architectural field and its semantics. The results directly inform how we, as researchers, designers and engineers, should take advantage of both novices’ and experts’ strategies to develop tools, methods or interfaces to support next generation cooperative design.