Froukje Sleeswijk Visser

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.

A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user's life

In user-centred design, a widespread recognition has surfaced for the importance of designers to gain empathy with the users for whom they are designing. Several techniques and tools have been developed to support an empathic design process and several issues are indicated that support an empathic process, but precise definitions and a framework of what makes ‘empathy’ is missing. Although the need for empathic approaches in design has been repeatedly stressed, a fundamental basis of the concept of empathy is missing. The goal of this paper is to inform the discussion in the design community by applying the concept of empathy as it has developed in psychology. This paper presents a review of how empathy has been discussed in design and psychology literature, and proposes a background framework for supporting empathic approaches in designing. The framework presents empathy in design as a process of four phases, and gives insight into what role the designers own experience can play when having empathy with the user. This framework can be applied to three areas: research activities, communication activities and ideation activities.

Mind the face

Images of real people trigger designers to empathise with users. This paper explores the use of visual representations of a persons face in conveying results of user studies to design teams. Several small and large studies with different explorations around the search, choices and use of images are described. The paper concludes with tentative guidelines for selecting and creating effective images of users in design communication.

Co-creative Practices in Service Innovation

This chapter is about co-creative practices that can be used for the purpose of service innovation. It starts with an introduction to our core assumption that innovation is a deliberate activity and can be enabled and triggered through staged co-creative practices. The main reasons for co-creative practices are first, bringing different people together to share, make sense and to collaborate, and secondly, to rethink current and explore future possibilities. In line with Kelley’s ideology, “You can prototype just about anything. What counts is moving the ball forward, achieving some part of your goal”. We highlight the open-ended exploration practices familiar to designers, in which the practice of identifying problems goes hand in hand with creating solutions. The basis for exploration in this chapter is in engaging people in reflective and creative dialogues, and to situate activities in order to set frames for reflection. In practice, the co-creative practices emerge and evolve in a non-linear progress of stages that are partly overlapping and in relation with each other. This chapter, however, is organised through the use of four lenses: (1) insight generation, (2) concept exploration and development, (3) converging towards a specification and (4) transformative and implementation processes. The chapter introduces a number of examples and applied co-creative practices from various fields of service design. They address the co-creative character of many well-known tools such as role playing, context mapping, design games and experience prototyping. Finally, the chapter sums up the main considerations for the applications of co-creative practices, defining the purpose, utilising co-creative characters and developing facilitation capacity.

Achieving empathy with users: the effects of different sources of information

This paper describes a comparative study, which explores the influence of different sources of information on design sessions aiming for product concepts for children with autism. Six design teams were informed about children with autism under three conditions: A teams had only background information, B teams had background information and direct contact, and C teams had background information plus a video. Each team conducted a design session resulting in one product concept. These sessions were videotaped, transcribed and analysed for signs of empathy. The proposed product concepts were evaluated by parents and teachers of the children. Results show that the two B teams discussed the user group most intensively, and produced concepts that fitted the user group best. The two A teams made many false assumptions about the user group. One C team discussed the user group intensively and produced a product concept appreciated by caregivers, while the other C team did the opposite. The latter team was not motivated for the session. The results indicate that, and show examples of how, direct contact brings empathy with users to design teams and positively influences the quality of the product concepts they produce. Willingness and motivation of designers are key factors in empathic design.

Co-design: practices, challenges and lessons learned

This paper is a proposal to organize a workshop about co-design during the during MobileHCI 2008 Conference. Main goals of the workshop are to discuss co-design practices and to articulate challenges and lessons learned.

User-Centered Service Innovation for Commercial Vehicles: Plugging in the Handyman Market

There is no vehicle segment where personalisation is as common, as for Light Commercial Vehicles. These vehicles are used for a large variety of tasks, supported by an ever-increasing number of new services. For Light Commercial Vehicles, one of the most interesting market segments from the perspective of service innovation and product personalisation is the handymen market. Handymen have a very strong relationship with their vehicle, highly specific mobility needs depending on their specialisation, and spend a lot of time personalising their vehicle.

Shaping loyalty: experiences from design research practice

Creating custom tools is crucial for accelerating, linking, and deepening various design-research and innovation activities. It is an exciting time for design researcli. Many companies in the service sector (e.g.*, healthcare, insurances companies) are striving to gain a competitive advantage by finding ways to improve the customer experience or by adjusting products or services to dynamically changing contexts of use. There is a need to step beyond the traditional way of developing products and services. Consequently, there is a perfect space for design researchers to step into: supporting the business community in understanding people in the context of their everyday lives to create products and services that respond to their needs. To explore how companies can learn from the design research approach, we—a team of five design researchers