AP UX Week '07: Designing With Your Users: Generative Tools for Collective Creativity
[Live blogged at Adaptive Path UX Week 2007. Designing With Your Users: Generative Tools for Collective Creativity,
Part 1: Overview by Liz Sanders]
If you give people the right tools, they can experience something about their experience to you.
In product design you explore past memories and future dreams. In architectural planning for hospitals it became evident that design must also take the "dark side" into account. Memories and dreams also include nightmares and fears.
"Do" "Say" "Make" questions define the scope of your research. Do is right now and tomorrow. Say is more distant and maybe even further away from the moment. But all three questions unlock the moment.
Do methods involve photography, video, etc. to follow experiences as they occur. There are variations on what people do but it is not the fastest way to get at innovation. It is essential to understand experience but we need more.
But instead of this, let's focus on what people make.
This is useful if you have "say" and "do" information already. Making helps deal with big problems.
What people make
Put simple and ambiguous components together in toolkits that people can use to express their memories, dreams, ideas, fears, unmet needs, etc.
People already know how to express themselves with the maketools. They enjoy the creative process.
The parts and pieces are simple. They are visual, colorful, and vary in size. They are ambiguous. They vary from bought to made. They are sometimes verbal and they are numerous. Photos that range from abstract to concrete.
People aren't designing a gizmo, they are designing an experience. It's not just what they make, it's the experience they describe around what they have made; it's what the thing is for and how it does that.
The making should be done in the context of the experience.
It isn't just the making. It is the telling that is very important.
This is more difficult to analyze than other kinds of data. You have the object and the story to evaluate. This is a hug amount of information. It is possible to use this purely for inspiration but that isn't recommended. If you have limited time and budget it is a way to get started.
Let yourself be surprised by what people will make for you. Some people will make multiple visions of a solution. Some will make elaborate narratives involving themselves.
This can be a powerful way to get people to take part in the design process. Let the people who are in the situation show you how they would do and listen to what they have to say about it.
[Many examples were given from the medical profession. Nurses designing medicine delivery systems, room layouts, etc.]
Implications
So are we losing control of the design process? Yes, we are losing control of the traditional design process, but we are at the same time opening it up to others. We are entering a new design era.
How much do we want everyday people to drive design? They should drive it to the extent of their expertise, ability, and interest. Let the context guide your work.
If everyone is creative, what is the role of the designer? Designers will use their creativity to amplify the creativity of others. Designers in the future will build scaffolds upon which everyday people can build.
So what's next?
Expert-driven > User-centered > Co-creation
Designing stuff > co-experiencing > collective creativity > cultural sustainability
Everyone can use this language, the language of physical objects.
Across large scales and expanses of time, we need to deal with issues of culture at a broader level.
If this is about experience, we need to think about exploring future experience at a more holistic collective level. We need to see how what we design today will impact all of us in the future.
Q: Talk more about analysis?
A: Video and audio record everything. Get transcripts of everything. Every word that is uttered is obtained. Because everyone gets the same toolkit you can do some quantitative analysis if you get creative with it. The goal is to look for patterns. Put absolutely everything into a database so make it easy to sort, sift, filter, and find patterns. There is more objectivity in it than you might think. You could just conduct the session and then talk about what you've learned. That is also valid but it does miss something that you get when you deeply analyze the data.
Q: Who can use these toolkits?
A: Everyone if the person giving the instructions absolutely believes that everyone can give something. Recruiting is an interesting issue but remember that you don't throw people into this.
Have them log behavior for a week or so to get them thinking about what they are doing. Use exercises to prep for this so people know about each-other and what they are aiming at. Immerse them in their own experience.
Q: How do you scale this?
A: Start with pilot tests on colleagues, family, and neighbors. Use stickies, magazine collage, etc. Play with other people, listen and learn.
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