Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders

Co-creation and the new landscapes of design

Designers have been moving increasingly closer to the future users of what they design and the next new thing in the changing landscape of design research has become co-designing with your users. But co-designing is actually not new at all, having taken distinctly different paths in the US and in Europe.  The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the roles of the designer, the researcher and the person formerly known as the ‘user’. The implications of this shift for the education of designers and researchers are enormous. The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the landscape of design practice as well, creating new domains of collective creativity. It is hoped that this evolution will support a transformation toward more sustainable ways of living in the future.

Contextmapping: experiences from practice

In recent years, various methods and techniques have emerged for mapping the contexts of peoples interaction with products. Designers and researchers use these techniques to gain deeper insight into the needs and dreams of prospective users of new products. As most of these techniques are still under development, there is a lack of practical knowledge about how such studies can be conducted. In this paper we share our insights, based on several projects from research and many years of industrial practice, of conducting user studies with generative techniques. The appendix contains a single case illustrating the application of these techniques in detail.

From user-centered to participatory design approaches

There is a shift in perspective occurring today at the collaborative edge of design and social science. It is a change from a user-centered design process to that of participatory experiences. It is a shift in attitude from designing for users to one of designing with users. It is a new design movement (that we call Postdesign) that will require new ways of thinking, feeling and working. Participatory experience is not simply a method or set of methodologies, it is a mindset and an attitude about people. It is the belief that all people have something to offer to the design process and that they can be both articulate and creative when given appropriate tools with which to express themselves. Background The integration of design with the applied social sciences is relatively new. Design firms began experimenting with the social sciences in the early 1980s. The experiment was designdriven, with social scientists being brought in to serve the design process. As a social scientist trained both in psychology and anthropology, I was one of these “experiments.” I began to serve the design process in 1982. In the 1980s I played the role of the human factors practitioner, or “user advocate.” My role was to know the user and to translate that knowing into principles and prescriptions that the designers with whom I worked could understand and use. We called this the user-centered design process. As I learned ways to help make products and information systems more usable, I also studied the designers, especially the ways they visually communicated with each other. User-Centered Design Process In the user-centered design process, we are focused on the thing being designed (e.g., the object, communication, space, interface, service, etc.), looking for ways to ensure that it meets the needs of the user. The social scientist/researcher serves as the interface between the user and the designer. The researcher collects primary data or uses secondary sources to learn about the needs of the user. The researcher interprets this information, often in the form of design criteria. The designer interprets these criteria, typically through concept sketches or scenarios. The focus continues then on the design development of the thing. The researcher and user may or may not come back into the process for usability testing. In user-centered design, the roles of the researcher and the designer are distinct, yet interdependent. The user is not really a part of the team, but is spoken for by the researcher.

Generative Tools for Co-designing

Whose dreams are ‘the stuff the future is made of’? The dreams of CEOs? Technologists? Business people? Or the dreams of everyday people? In this paper I will talk about a journey toward a future being made from the dreams of everyday people. I will describe how we are learning to catalyse, capture and collect their dreams and aspirations. I’ll do so by showing examples of ‘tools’ we give people so they can express themselves visually and verbally. Then I will tell how we are beginning to work with people, using their dreams and aspirations to inform as well as inspire the design development process.

A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design

The field of Participatory Design (PD) has grown rapidly over the last 20 to 30 years. For more than two decades non-designers have been increasingly involved in various design activities through a large number of participatory design projects all over the world. The project aims in PD have developed from being mainly about ICT development to today include, for instance, space design, product development, industrial design, architecture, service- and transformation design. As every project is unique, it is necessary to decide which design approach(es), methods, tools and techniques to use in a specific project. Thus many practices for how to involve people in designing have been used and developed during the years. There is some confusion as to which tools and techniques to use, when, and for what purpose. Therefore we are proposing a framework to help organize the proliferation of tools, techniques and methods in hopes that the PD community will benefit by discussing relevant applications and identifying potential areas for further exploration.

The effects of graphemic, phonetic, and semantic relationships on access to lexical structures

The question of whether or not lexical information is accessed directly from a visual code or by a process of phonetic mediation was investigated in three lexical decision experiments. Phonetic similarity influenced decisions about visually presented words only when they were to be discriminated from orthographically regular nonwords. When consonant strings or random letter strings were used as nonwords, phonetic similarity effects were absent, and graphemic similarity exerted a powerful effect while evidence of semantic priming was found. This pattern was interpreted as evidence of direct lexical access, which is probably the normal processing mode for skilled readers. Phonetic coding, when it occurs, may be a storage strategy rather than a part of the addressing chain for lexical structures.

Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning

The role of making in the design process has been growing, taking on new forms and involving new players over the past 10 years. Where we once primarily saw designers using making to give shape to the future, today we can see designers and non-designers working together, using making as a way to make sense of the future. In this paper, we describe the landscape of design research and practice at the end of 2013 with special attention to the role of making across these perspectives: approach (cultural probes, generative toolkits and design prototypes), mindset (designing for people and designing with people), focus in time (the world as it is, the near future and the speculative future) as well as variations in design intent (provoking, engaging and serving).

Hospital Patient Room Design The Issues Facing 23 Occupational Groups Who Work in Medical/Surgical Patient Rooms

Objective: The aim of this study was to learn from a wide range of hospital staff members about how the design of the patient room in which they work adversely affects their ergonomics or hinders their job performance. Background: In addition to providing a healing space for patients, hospital patient rooms need to serve as functional workplaces for the people who provide clinical care, to clean, or to maintain room functions. Therefore, from a design perspective, it is important to understand the needs of all the users of hospital patient rooms with regard to room design. Method: One hundred forty-seven people, representing 23 different occupational stakeholder groups, participated in either focus groups or interviews in which they were asked to identify room design issues that affect the performance of their work tasks. Results: Key issues shared across multiple stakeholder groups included an inability to have eye contact with the patient when entering the room, inadequate space around the bed for the equipment used by stakeholders, the physical demands experienced as stakeholders move furnishings to accomplish their activities or access equipment, and a lack of available horizontal surfaces. Unique issues were also identified for a number of stakeholder groups. Conclusions: There are a number of issues that should be addressed in the next generation of hospital patient rooms, or when refurbishing existing facilities, so that all occupational stakeholder groups can work effectively, efficiently, and without undue physical stress.

Fusion of horizons: Co-designing with Cambodian children who have prosthetic legs, using generative design tools

This paper presents a field study exploring the challenges and implications of applying a participatory design process through the use of generative design tools with children using prosthetic legs in rural Cambodia in order to facilitate their involvement in the design process. First, it reviews the main research paradigms in which user research is conducted, including positivism, critical theory and interpretivism, and compares the paradigms in terms of the motives they carry for involving users in the design process. The case is then positioned in the interpretivistic research paradigm using philosophical hermeneutics as a guide. As the first application of generative design tools with children in developing countries who have special needs, the case revealed many challenges and pointed to the need to go well beyond the contextual domains typically addressed in user-centred or product-centred design today. The paper concludes by presenting the pyramid model, which designers can use to obtain an overview of the knowledge they need for developing a relevant solution, and to reflect upon how their understanding develops in this process.

Collaborating with cardiac sonographers to develop work-related musculoskeletal disorder interventions

Abstract For more than two decades, surveys of imaging technologists, including cardiac sonographers, diagnostic medical sonographers and vascular technologists, have consistently reported high prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal discomfort (WRMSD). Yet, intervention research involving sonographers is limited. In this study, we used a participatory approach to identifying needs and opportunities for developing interventions to reduce sonographers’ exposures to WRMSD risk factors. In this paper, we present some of those needs. We include descriptions of two interventions, targeted for cardiac sonographers, that were developed, through an iterative process, into functional prototypes that were evaluated in pilot tests by practicing sonographers. One of these interventions is now in daily use. We would like other engineers and ergonomists to recognise this area of opportunity to apply their knowledge of biomechanics and design in order to begin to address the high prevalence of WRMSDs in sonographers, by working with sonographers to develop useful and usable interventions. Practitioner Summary: This paper discusses needs, opportunities and methods for working with sonographers in order to develop interventions to reduce their exposure to risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal discomfort. Results from field tests of two novel interventions targeting cardiac sonographers are also presented.