Co-reflection: user involvement for highly dynamic design processes Oscar Tomico
Kees Overbeeke
Designing Quality in Interaction Designing Quality in Interaction Department of Industrial Design Department of Industrial Design T.U. Eindhoven
T.U. Eindhoven
P.O.Box 513, 5600 MB
P.O.Box 513, 5600 MB
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
[email protected]
[email protected]
Joep Frens Designing Quality in Interaction Department of Industrial Design T.U. Eindhoven P.O.Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
[email protected]
Overview User involvement in systems, products and related services design has increased considerably in relevance. The way user involvement actually progresses depends on how the users are situated in relation to the design process. Their influence may extend from the results of the design project to planning and managing the course of the design project. Sequential techniques developed for the rational problem solving or reflective process have a limited application in highly dynamic design processes. More precisely, in sequential design processes validation steers reflection into a single direction. For this reason, a methodological approach not based on the sequential (hypothetical-deductive) paradigm but on the dialectical inquiry (inductive paradigm) between designers and users is considered. The versatile and holistic nature of this co-reflective process makes it suitable for dynamic and unstructured design processes based on different streams of reflection.
Keywords Design process(es); user participation; co-reflection; inductive processes, constructivist psychology.
ACM Keywords Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2009, April 4 – April 9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA ACM 978-1-60558-247-4/08/04.
H.5.2 Evaluation/methodology
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Objectives The challenge that this article is addressing is what kind of tools for user research can be applied highly dynamic design processes aiming for societal transformation. These emerging design processes have an unstructured nature allowing for multiple iterations and different streams of reflection like the reflective transformative design process from Hummels & Frens [1] (small circles in figure 1). These processes that explicitly aim to create new contexts need tools versatile enough to assist it and wide enough to embrace the enormous variability of possible user’s needs, desires and fantasies essential to comprehend the user-product relationship.
Figure 1. The Co-reflection process with the exploration, ideation and confrontation phases (big circles) applied to the reflective transformative design process from Hummels & Frens [1] (small circles).
Most of the user involvement techniques developed till now share a sequential approach like the design process they support (rational problem solving [2] or reflective process [3]). These techniques have a limited application in highly dynamic design processes. In sequential design processes validation steers reflection into a single direction. For this reason, a methodological approach not based on the sequential (hypothetical-deductive) paradigm but on the dialectical inquiry or Socratic questioning (inductive) is considered. This dialectical inquiry between designers and users can be defined as a constructivist therapeutic session [4]: a session involving a face-to-face conversation between psychologist and client (two-way trust principle). This co-reflective process is a holistic nature allows for obtaining more trustworthy information from the relationship between designers and users while steering reflection into different directions [5]. Thus, allowing designers to reflect on their transformative vision
(upper circle in figure 1), their explorative actions and procedures (left circle in figure 1), and their analysis and abstraction strategies (right circle in figure 1).
Process The current article proposes a co-reflective process for user involvement, which starts by getting acquainted of the current societal context in order to envision a new reality. This new reality comprises the motivational aspects of the users’ vision of the now, making them able to establish a comparison with the designers’ transformative vision. This process can be developed in three parts: exploration of the current situation, ideation through a discovery process and confrontation with the current stage of the design process. Each part builds upon the next. The exploration of the current situation is used as the basis for an ideation process. At the same time, this ideation part is used as an empathy tool to make users more aware of their own motivations and desires in order to confront them with the ideas that the designers have. This process can be repeated multiple times during the design process. A co-reflective session uses the motivational drives for converging designers’ and users’ point of view and triggers reflection for the design action and analysis strategies (see figure 1): Exploration starts by analyzing the social phenomena and creates a solid grounding for the ideation phase. Ideation is triggered by the information from exploration, works as a constructive ideation process that builds upon the existing concept and is an empathizing warming up for the confrontation.
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Confrontation basically updates the motivational vision from the designer by merging it with the users desires and aspirations.
Key Findings Developing co-reflective tools means creating dynamic and holistic tools that can adapt to an unstructured process. These tools can grow in complexity in relation to the phase of the design process and that’s their big potential. They can increase the level of detail of the information obtained, as the design process requires it. Co-reflective processes become more discrete as the design process evolves.
Figure 2. Design of a presentation tool empowering active learning. The first photo shows the exploration of the theme spring with paper and crayons. The second photo presents the use of use of existing products to trigger desired behaviors and new functionalities for the ideation phase. The third photo illustrates the use of low-fi prototypes to foresee its impact on the user experience during the confrontation phase.
The exploration phase focuses on the present experience with existing contexts, products, prototypes or services as a starting point of the process. Exploration applied together with discursive techniques, such as the dialectical laddering [6], highlight the way people construct versions of mental, social and material events and processes as parts of particular communicative practices. It inquires into the causes of social phenomena by understanding topics like memory, attribution, values, attitudes and the implications between them [7]. It helps designers and users to get a clear picture of the context to be addressed. Different techniques to apply are reenacting the experience, narrations and related situations. Reenacting the experience is basically an immersive technique where designers and users get empathy with the context under investigation through experiencing it (see first picture in figure 2). Narration is an under cover analytical technique based on retrospective thinking, which considers the users as motivated storytellers. In related situations, comparisons are used
to create mental maps of perceived differences, on which the decision making process relies. The ideation phase analyzes the past memories in order to project them into personal dreams of future experiences. Projective techniques are used to enhance sensitivity to tacit understandings. They work as a mode of guidance that underlies intuitive knowing [8]. The results are sensory reconstructions described as being somewhere between perceptions and symbolic thought. They represent a more aesthetically rich and personally felt mode of mental awareness [9]. It helps designers and users to discover a new reality (ideal situation/context), a new vision based on users’ own needs, desires and fantasies. Different techniques to apply are (ordered by the level of detail): fantastic storytelling, relating values to behaviors, and objects to trigger new realms (see second picture figure 2). Fantastic storytelling uses past experiences as a source of inspiration to write a desired interaction behavior forcing participants to break with the real world and reach the highest abstracted level i.e. their fantasies. Values relating to behaviors use sensory metaphors to facilitate the understanding of the complex emotional system through an intuitive idea (an existing example in the everyday life with some high emotional content). Objects to trigger new realms is based on using existing materials, products or components to open new behavioral possibilities to participants and make them reflect on them. The confrontation phase focuses on analyzing how the design concept suits the users as a transformational agent to create their new reality. These comparisons are based on asking for strengths and weaknesses of the designers’ vision proposed by means of a scenario,
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sketching an artifact or a working prototype. The purpose is to find solutions to the weaknesses and enhancing the strengths at the same time. It is a constructive rather than a destructive process, which builds upon the existing concept in order to find a path to explore for the next iteration. Thus, it doesn't become prescriptive. It is a source of information for the designers’ own work. Different techniques to apply are build upon a vision, contextual use of an artifact and experiencing low-fi prototypes (see third picture in figure 2). Build upon a vision is based on showing a scenario of the yet to be designed product. Contextual use of an artifact basically uses an object as a proof of concept/placeholder of the transformative activity. Experiencing low-fi prototypes proposes a defined functionality linked to a yet to be defined interaction.
Results/Impact This article illustrates an alternative view on validation procedures based on user involvement. In this case validation is considered a constructive and not a destructive process. More precisely, it is defined as a co-reflective session between designers and users. It starts with sensitizing with the users to help them to construct their own reality in order to be more descriptive and not prescriptive. In fact, this coreflective process presented could be used as a source of information and inspiration for the design process. It assists designers to get more insights into the experiences they want to address, values people have about a certain topic, desired usage (interaction), product characteristics or the significance they put on the product. In relation to other tools and co-design processes (which don’t give enough freedom to the designer to operate) co-reflection gives them the
opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the context, motivational aspects, associate behaviors and desired functionalities but still giving them room to go beyond.
References [1] Hummels, C. & Frens, J. Designing for the unknown: a design process for the future generation of highly interactive systems and products. In Proc. of EPDE conference, (2008). [2] Roozenburg, NFM & Eekels, J. Product Design: Fundamentals and methods. Wiley, Chichester, 1995. [3] Schön, D.A. The Reflective practitioner. Basic Books, New York, 1983. [4] Kelly, G.A. The psychology of personal constructs, vol. 1 & 2. Routledge, London, 1955. [5] Tomico, O., Pifarré, M. and Lloveras, J. Analyzing the role of constructivist psychology methods into user subjective experience gathering techniques for product design. In Proc. ICED’07 (2007). [6] Hinkle, D.N. The change of personal constructs from the viewpoint of a theory of implications. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University, USA, 1965. [7] Tomico, O. Subjective experience gathering techniques for interaction design. Doctoral dissertation, UPC, Barcelona, 2007. [8] Ippolito, M.F. & Tweney, R. D. The inception of insight. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Davison (Eds.) The nature of insight. MIT Press, Cambridge (1995), 433 462. [9] Stevens, C. D. & Walker, B. M. Insight: Transcending the obvious. In Neimeyer, G.J., Neimeyer, R.A. (Eds.) Advances in Personal Constructs Psychology, New directions and perspectives. Praeger Publishers, Westport (2002).
