Innovation in HCI: What Can we Learn from Design Thinking? Alma L. Culén
Abstract
Institute of Informatics
Design thinking, a methodology originating from the design disciplines, oriented towards problem solving through a human-centered approach, rapid prototyping and abductive reasoning, has huge impact on innovation in business, education, health and other crucial domains. Many similarities, and differences, can be found between design thinking and a HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) design approach to innovation. The aim of the workshop is to explore these similarities and differences, with a goal of re-thinking possibilities, including combining practices towards increased impact of HCI in shaping innovative technologies for the future.
University of Oslo P.B.1080 0316 Oslo, Norway
[email protected] Asbjørn Følstad SINTEF P.B. 124 0314 Oslo, Norway
[email protected]
Author Keywords HCI design, design thinking, design processes, innovation. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). NordiCHI '14 , Oct 26-30 2014, Helsinki, Finland ACM 978-1-4503-2542-4/14/10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2639189.2654845
ACM Classification Keywords H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION, HCI, H.5.0 General, H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces.
Introduction The importance of innovation is commonly acknowledged. As stated by the innovation theorist Chesbrough: "companies that don't innovate die" [4].
At the same time, concern has been voiced on the failure of the design processes currently applied within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to support breakthrough innovation [3]. In particular, HCI design processes are held to lead mainly to incremental innovation and small changes [9]. In parallel with the criticism concerning the lack in innovative power for HCI design processes, design thinking has emerged as an area of human-centred research and practice geared towards breakthrough innovation [2]. Design thinking is seen as a humancentred innovation process concerning complex real world problems, which are solved through empathy with users, rapid prototyping and abductive reasoning [7]. Successful educations applying design thinking, such as the one by d.school at Stanford, also show that design thinking goes beyond a designer alone, engaging competent multidisciplinary teams in innovation through design processes, making sure that innovation is feasible, viable and addresses human values.
Figure 1: A simple design process model.
At the surface, the design processes rooted in design thinking and HCI are seductively similar. To exemplify, a model design process depicted in Figure 1, does it represent design thinking or HCI design process? Arguably, the differences between design thinking and HCI must be sought by other means than comparing high-level design process, for example, by considering differences in assumptions, scope and aim of the design process – concerning, for instance, the role of requirements specification, the need to question assumptions, the consideration of organizational issues, and the systematic exploration of design alternatives. Key to design thinking is the capacity to generate and explore design alternatives, to reason as to which of the alternatives are worthy of being continued, as well as to be able to combine parts from different design proposals into the best solution to the problem [7]. This same problem-solving procedure, it is argued [2], may be applied to design of anything from designing organizations, to designing products, services or systems. Furthermore, while HCI design processes rarely aim to bring about organizational changes, a design thinking approach to innovation can affect the whole organization [2,8]. Culén and Kriger [5], in their framework for long-term competitive advantage of ICT intensive organizations, consider design thinking to be an important factor for creative leadership, organizational vision, values, culture, and knowledge distribution. We acknowledge that within HCI, and in particular within participatory design, there is a long tradition of work with issues along practical-political and theoretical-conceptual lines that correspond to those of design thinking [1]. However, whereas design thinking
may follow an abductive approach to problem solving, HCI design processes more strongly follow an analytical approach through specifications of user needs and requirements [9] – something that makes HCI approaches more aligned with the engineering tradition, though possibly at the cost of being less encouraging of breakthrough innovation. Furthermore, HCI design processes are developed to reduce risk of new solutions not fitting their context of use. We believe that deeper exploration of similarities and differences between design thinking and HCI design may reveal new paths for HCI design practitioners to explore towards increased impact of HCI in shaping innovative technologies for the future.
The Workshop The workshop is intended for HCI researchers and HCI design practitioners, design thinking researchers and practitioners, and others interested in innovation. The goal of the workshop is to gain deeper understanding of how HCI design practices can benefit from design thinking, by integrating or combining approaches and practices. In fact, considering the practice as a unit of design [6] might be an approach to have in mind at the workshop, in order to re-think and re-imagine ways in which these practices may enrich each other and better support their practitioners in defining the future of technology, technology intensive businesses, and social innovation. The workshop starts by building a common understanding of the state of research within HCI and design thinking as approaches to innovation. Two introductory presentations will be given by organizers (and/or an invited speaker), followed by a planar
discussion, potentially offering additional or differing perspectives on innovation in HCI. Further, participants will together explore areas where the synergy between fields already exists. Position, or short research papers, 2-4 pages long, on theoretical issues or practical and research-based experiences, will be solicited in, but not limited to, the following § § § § § § § § §
HCI, design thinking and innovation towards sustainable future Design of social innovation Design thinking, HCI and service innovation Design thinking, HCI and values Design thinking in HCI education The role of multidisciplinary teams in innovation Participatory design and design thinking Innovation and decision-making processes Living labs and design thinking
Focusing on larger patterns around ways in which innovation is supported in these areas, we hope to be able to find more feasible, repeatable and reliable, alternatives to support innovation in HCI design. The length of presentation for each paper will depend on the number of participants in the workshop, but we dedicate 90 minutes to these presentations. This will leave the afternoon for group work. The after lunch part of the workshop will be highly interactive; specific subtopics will be discussed both in groups (with 3 or 4 participants) and in plenum. The organizers, based on the content of the submitted position papers, will choose group discussion topics.
We hope to be able to attract a group of experienced practitioners and researchers for mutual sharing and learning, contributing to the re-thinking of innovation, in particular, within fields promoting a human-centred approach to design. Program 09:00–09:30 Introduction of the workshop 09:30–10:30 Presentation of participant’s position 10:30–10:45 Coffee break 10:45–11:30 Remaining presentations 11:30–12:00 Discussion 12:00–12:30 Presentation of the case to work on in the afternoon 12:30–13:30 Lunch 13:30–14:30 Group work, addressing the case presented before lunch, HCI perspective 14:30–15:30 Group work, addressing the case presented before lunch, design-thinking perspective 15:30–16:00 Coffee break 16:00–17:00 Analysis of group work: what have we experiences (leading to deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both HCI and design thinking approaches, but also, hopefully, some interesting results regarding the case). 17:00–17:30 Comments, further ideas, wrap up. About organizers: Alma Culén is an associate professor in interaction design. She is interested in design and use of new technology, user innovation and design thinking.
Asbjørn Følstad holds a PhD in psychology and works as a senior research scientist at SINTEF, Norway. His main research interests include human-centred design, Living Labs, usability evaluation methods and user innovation. References [1] Bjögvinsson, E., Ehn, P., and Hillgren, P.-A. Design Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design Challenges. Design Issues 28, 3 (2012), 101–116. [2] Brown, T. Change by design: how design thinking can transform organizations and inspire innovation. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2009. [3] Buxton, B. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann, 2010. [4] Chesbrough, H. W. Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA, 2009 [5] Culén, A.L. and Kriger, M. Creating Competitive Advantage in IT-intensive Organizations: A Design Thinking Perspective. HCIB/HCII 2014, Springer (2014), 492–503. [6] Kuijer, L. et al. Practices As a Unit of Design: An Exploration of Theoretical Guidelines in a Study on Bathing. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 20, 4 (2008), 21:1–21:22. [7] Lockwood, T. Design thinking. Integrating Innovation, Customer experience, and Brand Value. Allworth Press, New York, NY. [8] Martin, R.L. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage. Harvard Business Press, 2009. [] Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research versus Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues 14,1 (2014), 7896.
