Pieter Jan Stappers

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.

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).

Spatial Balance of Color Triads in the Abstract Art of Piet Mondrian

We examined the interactive contribution of the color and size of the three areas occupied by the primary colors red, yellow, and blue in adaptations of abstract compositions by Mondrian to the perceived weight of the areas and the location of the balance centers of the compositions. Thirty-six art stimuli were created by experimentally changing the colors in the three areas of six original works so that the resulting five variations and the original constituted the six possible spatial arrangements of the three colors in the three locations. In experiment 1, design-trained and untrained participants determined the location of the balance center of each composition seen on a computer screen and rated the apparent weight or heaviness of each color area. In experiment 2, untrained participants determined the location of the balance centers of the compositions when projected to their actual size. It was found that, for both trained and untrained participants, the perceived weight of a color, especially red and yellow, varied as a function of the size of the area it occupied. Furthermore, participants in both experiments perceived shifts in the locations of the balance centers between the originals and their altered versions. Only the trained participants, however, perceived significant shifts in balance centers among the five variations of the compositions, demonstrating their superior sensitivity to the contribution of color to balance structure. Taken together, the findings demonstrate the existence of a color–area–weight relationship among color triads in abstract displays and the influence of this relationship on color balance in abstract compositions.

Doing Design as a Part of Doing Research

The increasing complexity of modern technologies in products has led to the establishment of design as an academic discipline, and a rapid growth in the connections between science, engineering and design. As part of this development, the relation between design and research is dynamically changing toward a tighter coupling. University-based design courses are beginning to include scientific theory and research skills as part of their curricula, and designers are playing a part in research projects. In many places, the need to establish a PhD or other doctoral programme for designers has been discussed, with some hesitation, as the traditional backgrounds of designers and researchers has been quite different.

The role of balance as an organizing design principle underlying adults' compositional strategies for creating visual displays

Abstract This study had two interrelated purposes, namely, to determine if balance influences the way adults create visual displays and to subject theoretical notions of pictorial balance to experimental scrutiny. Adult volunteers made four designs, one each from circles, squares, rectangles, or leaves of different sizes. A videotape recording of the development of each design from start to completion was used to create a digitized record of its image at 10% intervals of the time taken for its completion. It was found that, regardless of element type or phase of construction, the center of a design was closely aligned with the geometric center of the pictorial field demonstrating the power of the center of a square field to function as an “anchor” or balancing point about which a designs structural skeleton is organized. The ordering strategy used by participants to organize the elements of a composition about its balancing center was influenced by their shape characteristics and orientation potential. Structural weight was evenly distributed (balanced) about the center of the circle designs throughout their construction; an imaginary horizontal–vertical grid served as the structural skeleton for the creation of designs composed of squares and rectangles, and participants manipulated directionality of leaf elements to create an organized global design within the pictorial field. Finally, evidence of the visual salience of dynamic balance is provided by the finding that viewers were able to perceive subtle differences measured quantitatively in the distribution of physical weight about the axes of balanced compositions. Theoretical speculation concerning the nature of pictorial balance is discussed in light of the present findings. PsycINFO classification: 2100; 2300

Co-creating in practice: Results and challenges

The European Network of Living Labs has been established as one platform for collaborative and co-creative innovation, where users are involved in and contribute to the innovation process. However, what are current practices regarding user-driven open innovation? A review on how existing Living Labs in Europe have implemented the user as co-creator approach across the different stages of product and service innovation showed an emphasis on the Lab part, i.e., a predominant use of traditional methods, but less so on the Living part, i.e., methods of participation and co-creation. In this article, we illustrate how current methods stressing participation and co-creation can be deployed to strengthen current Living lab practices. We conclude with a discussion on the results and challenges to practice co-creation in practice.

Playing twenty questions with nature (the surprise version): reflections on the dynamics of experience

It is a common complaint that the science of cognition does not do justice to either the reality of cognition in the wild or to the demands of engineering socio-technical systems. This article draws on examples from early functionalist/pragmatist views in psychology, modern physics and dynamical systems theory to explore the ontological basis of this complaint. Tentative steps are made toward a new way to frame an ontology of experience. In this framework, the duality (complementary nature) of control and observation is offered as an alternative to the dichotomy (independent nature) of mind and matter.

Gust of me: reconnecting mother and son

The Gust of Presence conceptual design lets parents and children who live apart reconnect in a more friendship-based relationship. With two Gustbowls, parents and children can communicate in a simple way that requires little effort and could subtly become a part of their daily routines. Gustbowl is designed to promote and support informal, unobtrusive interactions in families whose members live apart. The Gustbowl helps families keep in touch, rather than just exchange information, by letting members be a part of each others daily routines. This lets them have the little encounters that are ordinary to members who live together yet are greatly missed by members who live apart. We describe how the Delft design team created the Gustbowl from user studies by developing the concept for and field-testing an experiential prototype.

Designing for other people's strengths and motivations: Three cases using context, visions, and experiential prototypes

The front end of product development has seen a rapid growth in attention for the end-users. For radical innovation, as well as for redesign and optimization, design teams are looking to incorporate the experiential knowledge of users into the design solutions. By means of three cases, we describe participatory techniques in the early phases of design, and how they impact both the content and the methods of designing. Key elements in this are found in the establishing of needs, requirements, design visions, and early experience prototyping. But these different steps are no longer clearly separated, as iterative prototyping with user participation throughout the design process is becoming a more regular approach to designing.