From Desire to Concept: A collaborative participatory design process exploring a mobile development company's design process, focusing on low-fi prototyping. more

by Vanessa Carpenter

Low-Fi Prototyping, Rapid Prototyping, Tat, Collaborative, Participatory Design, Process, Interviews, Workshops, Cultural Probes, Mobile

¨ ¨ MALMO HOGSKOLA From Desire to Concept: A collaborative participatory design process exploring a mobile development company’s design process, focusing on low-ﬁ prototyping. by Vanessa J Carpenter A thesis submitted in partial fulﬁllment for the degree of Master of Interaction Design April 2009 “We often wish for clear or constructive but reality rarely is. In practice it’s about handling the messes.” Erling Bj¨rgvinsson o ¨ ¨ MALMO HOGSKOLA Abstract Interaction Design Master of Interaction Design by Vanessa J Carpenter This thesis explores the demo process of TAT, The Astonishing Tribe, a mobile user interface development company in Sweden. TAT develops product demos, demonstrations of the capabilities of their software and design products. Through a series of ﬁve participatory design workshops, the demo process was explored, problem areas deﬁned, and a focus for the thesis developed. The focus became the demo request stage, when a demo is ﬁrst requested by a customer. In this stage, the customer provides a verbal request to TAT and TAT must interpret that request to create a concept for the demo. It is here that the customer’s desire is turned into a demo concept; here, that improvements can be made through the use of two tools developed during the course of this thesis: low-ﬁ prototyping tools. These tools consist of a Customer Kit: a mini cultural probe intended to both introduce the customer to TAT and to inspire them to think creatively while giving TAT an impression of their personality; and an expression tool, the UI building blocks: random objects scattered on a table to provoke conversation and provide a tangible means of expressing oneself. Throughout the ﬁve workshops conducted, the research question was revealed. The problem areas of the demo process were many, but the most signiﬁcant and most often referred to area was that of the demo request stage. Within this stage, conﬂict existed in the form of miscommunication, unclear goals, and a general misunderstanding of customer’s often vague requests. Through discussion with participants, it was determined that the best method to help begin improving the demo process would be to examine this customer request, and to clarify meaning, to interpret correctly what the customer desired. Finally, the discussion and knowledge contribution sections explore how this process impacted TAT, what eﬀect it has had on their demo process, and how these two tools can help them to have a clearer process. It examines how to engage their customers and also how to introduce and use a new tool within a highly creative and innovative company. This section explains how it is possible to conduct interaction design with a focus on the process, and how interaction design can focus on people, rather than technology to create a better outcome. Through the use of low-ﬁ prototyping, interaction design can be successful and insightful into the needs of people and can incorporate technology when or if necessary, but not necessarily as a primary focus. Cross disciplinary collaboration, held during participatory workshops lead to shared communication, and hopefully, more correct interpretation of the customer. ... Acknowledgements We’ve done the impossible and that makes us mighty. - Mal Many thanks are necessary; the completion of this thesis was, as has been my entire life, a practice in project management, with a stellar team providing expertise and encouragement throughout the process. My sincere appreciation goes to Erling Bj¨rgvinsson for his endless patience with me; o his suggestions were often something I had to sit back and think about but after some consideration, were of course, deeply relevant and something I could not have done without. I thank TAT for the entire journey, James Haliburton for reeling me in; Ola Larsen for sharing his frustrations and inspirations, and especially Simon Thorsander for his endless insight. Thank you to the participants, I know how valuable your time was and I appreciate that you shared it with me. A special shout-out to all Tatters, you’ve become my friends and I’m so glad to be a part of the team. My friends and family, I am indebted to you all, to mention a few: Amanda brought me to Sweden, showed me the ropes of Scandinavian living; Mads and Jonas, you’re my family here; Magda you’ve been my inspiration and Shannon, my wisdom; the Volpov’s: Ben, you got me through the ﬁrst leg of the journey, thank you for all you’ve done and for our friendship; Soﬁa and Roman you taught me more than you know, and I appreciate it all. My endless gratitude and love to Dzl. I especially thank my family for their love, generosity and support in giving me the encouragement and freedom to move across the world and achieve my dreams. ... iv Contents Abstract Acknowledgements List of Figures Abbreviations ii v x xi 1 Background and Introduction to Topic 1.1 Research Area and Thesis Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Thesis Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Background of TAT - The Astonishing Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 What is a Demo? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 My involvement as Demo Manager in TAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Interpretation: Understanding interpretation from diﬀerent perspectives 1.4.1 Tools: Communication, Design, Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 In Closing: Examining the focuses of this study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Related Works 2.1 Introduction to Related Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Designerly Ways of Knowing - Nigel Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Event Driven Project Management (PhD Dissertation) - Eva Brandt . . 2.4 Learning and Meaning Making from Erling Bj¨rgvinsson’s Socio-Material o Mediations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Meaning: Understanding meaning and metaphor from Where the Action Is by Paul Dourish, The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design, a thesis by Dan Saﬀer and Design Noir by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby . . . 2.7 Summary of Related Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Method and Process 3.1 Overview of Methods and Process . . . . 3.1.1 Outline of Workshops Conducted . 3.2 Methods used in this study . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Ethnographically inspired practices v . . . . . . . . 1 1 2 2 3 4 7 9 10 12 . 12 . 13 . 14 . 15 . 16 . 19 . 20 22 22 23 25 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contents 3.2.1.1 Audio Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1.2 Video Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1.3 Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Participatory Design as a Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Prototyping as a Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3.1 Low-Fi Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Methods used during design process at TAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4.1 Story Telling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4.2 Sketching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4.3 Role Playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4.4 Brainstorming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.5 Creative Surprises as a Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.5.1 Attachment to Concepts: A problem to keep watch for . 3.2.5.2 Emergent Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.5.3 Flexibility as a rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.6 Staging: Creating atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Workshops - Overview of Workshops 1 - 5 and Data Collection Methods . 3.3.1 Workshop 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1.1 Testing Workshop 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1.2 Workshop 1 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Workshop 2 and 3, Overview of Format and Structure . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Workshop 2 Aim and Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Workshop 3 Aim and Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.5 Workshops 1 - 3 Data collection and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.6 Workshop 4 Outline: Brainstorming ideas for tools for interpretation 3.3.7 Workshop 5 Outline: Exploring the tools: Customer kit and UI building blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.7.1 Cultural Probes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.7.2 Cultural Probe Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.7.3 UI Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion of Methods and Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi 26 26 27 28 29 29 30 30 31 32 32 32 33 33 33 34 34 34 35 35 38 38 38 39 40 41 41 42 42 44 3.3 3.4 4 Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results and Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 4.1 TAT Overview, Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Workshops 1, 2, and 3 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Workshop 1 Results - Gaining insight into the demo process . . . . 4.2.1.1 Procedure of Workshop 1 - Setup, instructions, and activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1.2 Proceedings of Workshop 1 - Happenings and insights. . 4.2.2 Workshop 2 - Results: Deconstructing the demo process . . . . . . 4.2.3 Workshop 3 - Results: Considering the Demo Process from an Interaction Design and Art Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Workshops 1 - 3: Summary and considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 48 49 49 50 51 53 56 57 5 Results and Analysis Workshop 4 59 5.1 Mapping the Demo Request Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Contents 5.2 Workshop 4 - Results of brainstorming 5.2.1 Mood Boards: . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 UI building blocks: . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Context speciﬁc testing: . . . . 5.2.4 Past examples: . . . . . . . . . 5.2.5 Hairstyle metaphor: . . . . . . 5.2.6 Image search: . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.7 Sketching: . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.8 Other tools: . . . . . . . . . . . Workshop 4 Summary of activities . . Workshop 4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii 62 63 65 66 66 67 68 68 69 70 70 72 72 74 74 76 78 79 80 5.3 5.4 6 Results and Analysis Workshop 5 6.1 Setting the stage and preparing the actors . . . . . 6.2 Workshop 5 - Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Cultural Probe Introduction and Discussion 6.2.2 Using the UI Building Blocks . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Post Role-Playing Discussion . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 Discussion: Design of Cultural Probe . . . . 6.3 Workshop 5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Feedback Session 7.1 Feedback Session Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Delivery of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Feedback from Vice President of Marketing and Head of Interaction Design on UI Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Feedback from Vice President of Marketing and Head of Interaction Design on Customer Kit (Cultural Probe) . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.4 Introducing tools to TAT, the company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.5 Feedback from TAT about Customer Kit and UI Building Blocks 7.2 Discussion of feedback sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 8.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.1 Design Consequences and Reﬂections . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.2 TAT’s Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.3 Thesis design process: insights and learning outcomes 8.1.4 Considering the design process and tools developed . . 82 . 82 . 82 . 84 . . . . 86 87 88 89 91 91 94 94 96 98 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Workshop 5 UI building blocks objects B Journey of the design question C TAT Hierarchy 101 103 105 D Workshop 4 Email, Suggestions 106 D.1 Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Contents Bibliography viii 109 List of Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 A Demo Example . . List of Demos . . . . Existing Demos . . . Demo Request Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5 6 6 24 36 36 37 43 45 TAT Hierarchy . . . . . . Customized Post-it Notes Test Workshop . . . . . . Demo Process Stages . . . Prototype of Juice Box . . UI Building Blocks . . . . Workshop 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Workshop 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Theme MindMap . . . . . Demo Process Flow Chart Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . Workshop 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 61 69 70 72 73 76 79 Cultural Probe . . . . . . . . . . Workshop 5 - UI building blocks Workshop 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . Box Design . . . . . . . . . . . . Customer Kit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 A.1 UI Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 B.1 A visual map to understanding the journey of the design question . . . . . 104 C.1 TAT Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 ix Abbreviations TAT PD UI The Astonishing Tribe Participatory Design User Interface x Dedicated to Dzl for enduring yet another thesis. You gave me love, strength and motivation and challenged me when I needed it. - .... .- -. -.- / -.– — ..- / ..-. — .-. / . ...- . .-. -.– - .... .. -. –. –..– / .. / .-.. — ...- . / -.– — ..- xi Chapter 1 Background and Introduction to Topic 1.1 Research Area and Thesis Introduction This thesis began with a journey into a company’s process of creating ”demos” (a mechanism used to display and develop their products and services); delving into how the process worked, who was involved, and ﬁnally discovering areas that could be improved. A series of participatory design workshops uncovered the problem area and prototyping methods were established to help understand how to clarify communication speciﬁcally, interpretation between customer and designer. A method of gaining feedback: the cultural probe, was then developed for customers to help them prepare for communication with the design team and prototyping tools were designed to help TAT designers to establish shared meaning and dialogue with customers. This process, including participatory design, prototyping methods, language, communication, cultural probes and the use of ethnographically inspired processes (interviewing, evaluation, observation, user testing) has helped to deﬁne the problem area and pose a potential solution. This thesis explores how the use of interaction design practices, namely those which are low-ﬁ, involving no or low technology use, can improve the demo process of TAT, The Astonishing Tribe through creating tools for interpretation. The thesis speciﬁcally focuses on interaction design methods which rely on collaboration, learning and interaction rather than software or technology as a tool. Studies into prototyping in the design proces have been conducted to gain insight from participants which they may not be able to clearly express verbally. Prototyping methods conducted have been low-ﬁ and exploratory, using little or no technology and focusing on interaction. 1 Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 2 The problem area of this study is the demo request stage in TAT’s demo process. This is where the customer communicates a desire and TAT is responsible to understand that desire and turn it into a concept. It is here that the study focuses on the research question, how can interpretation, derived from established and veriﬁed shared meaning between customer and TAT be created using low-ﬁ prototyping practices? The thesis presents ﬁve workshops, each evolving from the last which demonstrate how social interaction and hands-on tools can be useful in facilitating a common language used to create the company’s core products, demos. The thesis will examine how prototyping and meaning making, partially through the use of metaphor, activate clear communication and how the transfer of meaning becomes interpretation. 1.1.1 Thesis Overview This thesis is broken into six major sections: an introduction to TAT, The Astonishing Tribe and the context of the study; an exploration of related works and how they were valuable to the study; an explanation of methods used from the perspective of my own process, and for the facilitation of re-imagining the demo process of TAT; a breakdown of data collection practices for the ﬁve workshops; results of the ﬁve workshops; and a discussion, exploring the implications and outcome of the entire study. This study began with an employment with TAT, working as the Demo Manager, responsible for the demo process. An examination of this time period explores how it contributed to the study and how lessons learned became applicable once the thesis work began with a focus on the demo request stage. The transition from manager to student demonstrates a changing perspective and contributes to the way workshops were conducted, the types of methods used, and the establishment of two tools for interpretation. 1.2 Background of TAT - The Astonishing Tribe TAT, The Astonishing Tribe AB, is a mobile design and technology company, creating user interfaces (UIs) and the tools to create and change UIs on the ﬂy. TAT is located in Sweden, with satellite oﬃces in the USA and Korea. TAT’s website describes them, ”TAT was founded on a passion for developing digital visual experiences through the combination of aesthetics and technology.” TAT has four main products, TAT Cascades, TAT Motion Lab, TAT Kastor, and TAT Design. Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 3 TAT Cascades is the UI Framework, allowing customers to customize their user interfaces with the unique abilities that TAT has developed. One of the newest concepts presented by TAT is the physics engine, allowing the UI to look and behave within the conﬁnes of physics. TAT Motion Lab is TAT’s development environment. It is a combination of behind-thescenes coding and visual production abilities. This gives TAT UIs the speciﬁc static, reactive and moving graphics that they are known for. TAT Kastor is the rendering environment that brings the UI to life. It provides animations and layout and is module based so that customers can choose to use components of one part or another. TAT Design is the visual component behind TAT’s work. They oﬀer Concept, Interaction, Graphical and Prototype design, taking a project from start to ﬁnish or oﬀering a single component with experts at each stage. TAT has a unique visual style that is well recognized in the industry. 1.2.1 What is a Demo? Figure 1.1: An example of a demo, Asia Cute, a demo promoting the ﬂexibility of TAT Cascades. A major part of TAT’s work is to create demos for their UIs, showing potential customers the abilities of TAT’s software and design abilities. There are many types of demos: design demos, future concept, product showoﬀ, sales, or company marketing. Design and future concept demos were deﬁned as a designer’s individual interest that develops into a demo whereas pitches, product and sales were oriented to customers, and marketing referred to show-oﬀ demos for conferences, exhibits, website, etc. It was decided that we should focus on sales/product/marketing demos to create a process around those as they are typically more structured; these demos are created for TAT by TAT, with no direct companies or individuals paying for the concept, but rather to showoﬀ the potentials Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 4 of what TAT has to oﬀer and to further develop concepts or products. These demos typically portray the newest features of TAT Cascades and highlight the design abilities of the company. TAT breaks down demos as below: • Marketing Demos: (Public) Used at exhibitons and conferences. Can be posted on the external web, e.g. Social pond, oﬃcial customer projects, existing demos on TAT web. • Product Feature Demos: (Public) Demonstrates functionality and strengths of TAT products. Distributed to TAT customers. E.g. Cascades 3.3 in Reference Applications. • Customer Speciﬁc Sales Demos: (Strictly Conﬁdential) Demo speciﬁcally targeted at a speciﬁc customer, required to win a design case. • Prototypes: (Internal) Internal products and potential future products, circulated within TAT only. The demo process at TAT is deﬁned according to what type of demo it is. For the demos being discussed in this thesis, a number of actors and departments are involved throughout the entire process. Typically, a request is made by Marketing, Sales or Products, asking for a demo to be created for a certain event (trade show, conference, initial customer meeting, etc) and design begins mockups which are iterated and approved, are further developed by design and are also sent to engineering for coding and implementation. There are feedback meetings throughout the process and in the end, a movie ﬁle or a partially or fully functional on-mobile demo is created. 1.3 My involvement as Demo Manager in TAT Initially this thesis began as a study into ”Innovation Tools” working with Tenk, the Innovation department at TAT. It is a separate division which concentrates on generating new ideas, working with current and upcoming trends and focusing on the future of UI design and development. Before I could begin thesis work however, I was hired at TAT as Demo and Marketing Manager, and worked for four months until being laid oﬀ (for economic reasons) near the start of my thesis. I had already decided to do my thesis on the Demo Process since I was working with it and found it inspiring; the opportunity of managing the demo process gave me a unique insight into the many complexities within the process. Within my position as Demo Manager, I discussed with many people their Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 5 likes and dislikes about the demo process. Part of this was for my own understanding of the process and part of it was to gain an insight into how it might be improved. After interviewing several of the people who operate within the demo process I gained a much better understanding of some of the changes that needed to be made to have the process run more smoothly. I began with a suggestion from the Vice President of Design who thought having a Demo Request form would be an ideal way to better organize demos and give them a good start. I created an online system of management for demos to create a database of what TAT already had available. This was called Demo Land (see Figure 1.3 - List of Demos) and exists on TAT’s internal internet. Within this there were ﬁve major areas, the Demo Database, including information and screen shots about the existing demos (Figure 1.4); a Demo Information Form which TAT staﬀ could ﬁll out about a Demo, that would then be added to the Demo Database; an inspirational area for TAT employees to post their own concepts, videos and comments; a Demo Request Form and a Requested Demos List. The Demo Request Form was designed with the Head of Design to ensure that all questions were answered before beginning work on the demo. The Vice President of Design explained that a major problem in the demo process was the lack of speciﬁc requests, that requests were often vague and a lot of guess work was done by the design team. The Demo Request form was created (for internal use) and deployed on the internal internet, ready for use. (Figure 1.5 - Demo Request Form). Figure 1.2: A glimpse of the List of Demos screen. Within my ﬁrst days working at TAT, work on the major demo of the year began. It was a demo being prepared for the largest conference of the year, the Mobile World Conference. Designers had produced some highly functional demos as ideas but had Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 6 Figure 1.3: Existing demos displayed images, video and text information. Figure 1.4: The Demo Request form had ﬁll-in ﬁelds. Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 7 been turned down because the ideas were too ’polished’ or ﬁnished and a new concept was needed. Fifteen sketches were presented in a meeting and the stakeholders agreed with one of the concepts and it moved forward into development. Over the next two months, this concept was re-deﬁned and designers worked to produce a demo movie of the concept. The movie was reviewed many times throughout the process by stakeholders, and was reviewed by an external company who were interested in using this demo to showcase their new products. However, between the external company and the stakeholders, the demo underwent several changes over the period of two weeks until it was dropped completely and a new concept and demo was produced by upper management. Although many meetings were held, feedback was given and designers met the revision requirements, the demo was still cancelled. I expected this to be devastating to the design team but they were unsurprised by it, since it has happened multiple times in the past. I was very interested to understand where the demo went wrong considering that there had been feedback from stakeholders, designers had met requirements, and even the external company agreed with the demo until a certain point. Workshops were developed to help me (a newly appointed ”outsider” to the demo process) to understand the process framing from my new perspective. My role changed from that of an insider to an outsider, Bødker and Pedersen warn about the designer gaining more knowledge since they are in the ”midst of a socialization process” and that a main problem is getting enough knowledge while keeping a perspective on the object of the study. [1] Since I had already been an insider, and been immersed in the socialization process for some time, I had to step back and create a focus, get a perspective on what the study would be. I took this opportunity to begin workshops with the company and begin an exhaustive examination of the demo process from the perspective of those involved, (See Appendix C, TAT Hierarchy) through the use of participatory design workshops. It was through these workshops, and input from frustrated stakeholders and designers that the problem and solution were deﬁned; and tools for interpretation were developed. 1.4 Interpretation: Understanding interpretation from different perspectives When collaborating over diﬀerent competencies in a complex company matrix of people, skills, time, budgt and creativity, it is important to establish clear communication in an ongoing search for shared interpretation. The creation of a common language leads to shared meaning and understanding. Ehn and Sj¨gren [2] explore language games in o an attempt to determine what the designer and the user must learn to understand each Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 8 other. Ehn describes how shared action and reaction create opportunity for learning in language games. Shared action and reaction are the direct result of shared experience, but as Friedman explains while describing design research, ”it is not experience, but our interpretation and understanding of experience that leads to knowledge.” [3] However, it is imperative to consider when interpretation and understanding do or should occur: Friedman indicates it should be a reﬂection of experience but as described by Brandt, [9] Schon would argue rather that reﬂection in action, during, rather than after is more rewarding. Therefore, interpretation must be based on many aspects, reﬂection in action, post-analysis, and agreement on shared meaning. To gain knowledge, people must have a shared understanding, they must agree on the interpretation and experience this together. One example of knowledge from shared understanding comes from people speaking to each other. When two people speak, they may communicate clearly, they may understand every word coming from the other person; they might grasp the context, the point, and even the emotion or lack thereof within the other’s statement. If however, that person interprets what the other has said in a way that the other did not intend for it to be understood, misunderstanding, leading to any number of problems can result. Take, for example a conversation I, (a Canadian) had recently with my Danish boyfriend. We were discussing something relatively serious, whether we should rent or purchase a home together. I had asked, ”so you think renting is the better choice and we should do that?”, a conﬁrmation that we would in fact, choose to rent rather than purchase. His answer was ”sure.” For me, ”sure” is highly informal, something you say when someone asks ”want some ice cream?” In my understanding, growing up speaking Canadian English, with my particular upbringing (perhaps not all English speaking Canadians agree with me) that ”sure” is the equivalent of ”whatever” or ”yep”. It is not deﬁnitive, it is not enthusiastic, it’s simply, ”sure”. However, upon questioning this, my Danish boyfriend explained to me that for him, ”sure” was the equivalent of ”helt sikker” in Danish, roughly meaning ”deﬁnitely”; cue enthusiasm, relative formality, and deﬁnitiveness. We have a practice of this, clarifying our interpretations. We’ve found it’s the only way to understand each other properly and to avoid miscommunication. Clarifying, interpreting, creating a common understanding, how are these things done? How do people understand each other properly, interpret correctly what the other means? Through questions certainly, through, as Ehn described, ”Language Games”, [2] through time, eﬀort, energy, dedication and much patience, as anyone can attest to. But how to create this in a business? How to allow meaning to transcend language in a business meeting, where time is money, where patience is low, and expectations high? Preece et al, in their exploration of Paper Prototyping, suggest the use of a User Experience ’diplomat’, ”between both what users need and what client wants”. [2] However, this Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 9 would be similar to having a translator in the room between two languages, one party would always have to wait for the other to be translated. Preece conﬁrms the need for eﬃciency by pointing to the Time to Market challenge ”achieving design solutions rapidly, while retaining innovation and clarity.” The question is, how to allow for this interpretation to occur, for both customer and designer, within the alloted time frame, without a translator or endless questioning. For this to happen, there should be tools. Tools are an aid, they are not the end solution, buying a hammer does not create instantaneously the kitchen cabinets that you desire, but rather, the tools aid a person in their work. 1.4.1 Tools: Communication, Design, Interpretation Tools for communication are used within every ﬁeld: Lingua Franca is a common language used as a communication tool. Fanagalo, an example of Lingua Franca, is a South African pidgin language to help miners from various parts of South Africa work together safely in a dangerous job. [4] Another example of a tool for communication could be an emergency person’s tools, such as the phonetic language, the gestural and short speech used by ﬁreman, or number codes used by police. The training of animals in zoos is also an interesting study of interpretation, there is no common verbal language in most cases, and sign language, imitation, and reward based communication are the key tools. Tools for design communication are also common. IDEO, a company well recognized in the ﬁeld of design and especially interaction design, have created a card deck of 52 tools for communication, each being somewhat playful, and creating opportunity to establish and comprehend communication and idea generation. Other examples include sketching or paper prototyping as previously described by Preece mood boards: a collection of images, shapes, colors, and concepts that create a genre or style for the design. Øritsland and Buur [2] discuss an important issue when describing their use of mood boards to convey styles; interaction design does not need to make use of new technologies to be successful and preservation of aesthetics and examination of use are key features which should not be forgotten in the onslaught of new technologies available. This point is especially prevalent throughout the examination of potential tools for interpretation. Clarifying the requirements and exploring possible solutions is a key tool for interpretation since both clarifying and exploring are basic requirements for interpretation to occur. To develop these tools, an understanding of how they will be used and who will use them is necessary. A necessary requirement is understanding of context, who, what, Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 10 when, where, how, but these can only be assumptions of situation. Participatory Design, (PD) the practice of involving users in design has been deﬁned many times over by diﬀerent practitioners. T¨rpel explains PD as the ”direct participation of those who o will be aﬀected by the development [of products].” [5] Muller describes the Scandinavian approach as “direct and eﬀective worker participation” in his 1994 article on Participatory Design. [6] Considering the vast expansion of HCI and the growth of Interaction Design since that time, PD has come to further recommend that participants are from interdisciplinary backgrounds, and has a large array of suggestions for successful Participatory Design workshops. The guide, A Facilitators’ Guide to Participatory Workshops with NGOs/CBOs Responding to HIV/AIDS explains a number of techniques, further supported by Blomberg’s writing on PD to help facilitate successful workshops. [7, 8] 1.5 In Closing: Examining the focuses of this study This study began as a mission to ”ﬁx” the demo process. I was working on managing demos and realized something was wrong but wasn’t sure what. I thought the process needed to be ﬁxed, to be deﬁned; a set of rules for creating demos would surely solve the problem and create a smooth and productive process. However, upon speaking to only three people in the ﬁrst workshop held to examine the demo process, it quickly became clear that rules wouldn’t solve the problem. The problem, as yet undeﬁned, had to be explored in a collaborative manner, must involve the people who were part of the process, and must consider more than just stringent rules as an option. Five workshops were held in total, with a sixth session serving as presentation and review of what had transpired throughout the process. A considerable amount of time was spent on exploring and developing methods to conduct design research and to explore TAT’s design and demo process. This thesis explores related works, looking at similar projects and concepts that were applicable to what has been done in this study. It explores methods of design research, interaction design practices including prototyping and participatory design and uses an inspired practice of ethnography extensively. Workshops 1 through 5 are presented ﬁrst in terms of methods used and data collection methods and then explores the results of each workshop and what implications existed for TAT’s demo process. The discussion explores the design consequences of this study, how does the exploration of TAT’s demo process, the focus on their demo stage, and the development of two tools for interpretation have a bearing on what other designers should consider in their works? Further, it examines the core argument of this thesis; an approach to interaction design, even in the context of a design company does not necessarily need to use technology as a Chapter 1. Background and Introduction to Topic 11 means to an end. This study uses traditional interaction design processes and practices and yet does not create an interactive software based solution. Instead it focuses on aiding people who are overwhelmed by the presence of technology in their daily routines. The two tools developed require a hands-on approach with no electronics. Instead, these two tools foster creative thought about technologically based creations through a handson approach to tangible non-devices. Chapter 2 Related Works 2.1 Introduction to Related Works This chapter aims to explore similar works and works that have a signiﬁcant bearing on methods used in this study. Several core resources are referenced repeatedly, Eva Brandt’s Event Driven Project Management PhD acts as a guideline on conducting collaborative cross disciplinary workshops; Nigel Cross outlines design research in his book ”Designerly ways of knowing” and many lessons come from his explorations of conducting design research; Erling Bj¨rgvinsson’s PhD on learning and meaning making o show how ethnographical practices can have a great impact on design, and how the use of prototyping and interaction design practices leads to the formation of a product; a foray into prototyping and the implications and use of metaphors and meaning is explored from various author’s points of view and ﬁnally, an examination of these as a whole is held in the discussion at the end. Many of these works used workshops as a tool for their studies and as such each was carefully analyzed in a way that helped me to construct and examine my own workshops. The ﬁve workshops held in this thesis were the foundation of background, methods, data, and tools developed and so it was crucial to understand workshops from other perspectives and experiences. Prototyping as a practice was especially signiﬁcant. Prototyping allows participants to communicate through expressing themselves in a tangible manner; the ethnographical observation of this interaction can provide many important indicators of behavior, practice, and attitude. Prototyping examples are explored and prototyping methods used throughout the study are introduced. 12 Chapter 2. Related Works 13 The following works are brieﬂy summarized, focusing on points that had a signiﬁcant impact on the work done in this study. 2.2 Designerly Ways of Knowing - Nigel Cross Doing research in a design company wherein there were two processes of design, mine, and TAT’s, required a distinct education of design research methods and of the role of design research as compared to other types of research. Cross identiﬁes ”Designerly ways of knowing”, [10] exploring the emergence of design as an education ﬁeld, and examines how design is perceived in academic and professional settings. He deﬁnes the diﬀerence between the three educational cultures, Science, Humanities, and Design; Cross explains their primary concerns, Truth, Justice and Appropriateness. This theme is prevalent throughout the text as design research is deﬁned. Cross analyses how problems are solved by scientists and designers. Scientists examine the problem from an analytic perspective, examining all information and focusing on the problem. Designers examine the potential solution from a constructive perspective, continually debating potential solutions until the most appropriate one arises. Cross explores design through a series of statements of deﬁnitions, some examples of which are: ”exploratory”, ”emergent”, ”reﬂective”, and ”risky”. Throughout this study I have considered exploratory, to try and explore something new; the emergent, being observant for qualities and features that may exist outside of expectations; the reﬂective, giving each idea a conversation, and considering each workshop an active reﬂection; the risk, giving participants the opportunity to think outside their normal terms, and concentrating on seeking a solution for a situation that is somewhat functional. The design process should be considered as a series of events, some of which can be revisited and all can be a learning experience. Cross helps to deﬁne some of these events. Cross discusses the Creative Leap, the moment when an idea is born in three terms. Mutation is when features are modiﬁed to be something new. Analogy is when things are considered to be other things, using the term ”like a” often, ”it (object) would be like a (object)”. Emergence, when new properties emerge in an existing design. Designerly Ways of Knowing completes its pages with a structure for design research, suggesting three areas of focus: people, processes and products. People, Cross explains, have been designing forever, creating uses for things, and things to be used. Processes include tactics and strategies and make up methodology, including development and technique. Products are what a design results in. Cross completes this section with a Chapter 2. Related Works 14 statement of what good research is: purposive, inquisitive, informed, methodical, and communicable. By keeping these qualities in mind, the design process can be more clearly deﬁned, focusing on events which contribute to research as Cross deﬁnes it. 2.3 Event Driven Project Management (PhD Dissertation) - Eva Brandt Given the diversity of TAT, a group o people working together in a speciﬁc process wherein they must collaborate across competencies in a complex organizational structure; Brandt’s exploration into collaborative cross competency workshops becomes useful as a learning tool and inspiration. Brandt does an extensive study into collaborative product development with a focus on the development process, using workshops and participatory design to complete an illustrative study. Brandt initially critiques prescriptive models, which she explains focus on a sequence of stages, each with some design activity where the strategy is to get to the next stage. Her approach is to focus on discovering what moves development forward. ”Instead of modeling projects in which activities are coordinated between various functions I have chosen to focus on what happens if participants collaborate in seeking solutions to design problems.” [9] Brandt outlines her research aims, which are based on empirical evidence, and ”collaboration and learning across diﬀerent competences and interests.” She explains her method for collecting data with a focus on ”the interaction and communication between participants and how to stage the collaboration so that it would be a fruitful learning experience for the people involved.” This study draws heavily on the experiences of Brandt, learning from her examples, and focusing on a combination of stage driven progression, through having progressive workshops which give participants an environment in which to collaborate, and to discover problems and create solutions. Brandt explores how to uncover shared values and beliefs, again through dialogue and collaboration; she explains ”I ﬁnd that shared values and beliefs are grown out of experience”. [9] This is followed up by an exploration of language games where Brandt references Pelle Ehns, ”Ehn stresses that when designing it is not only the artifacts that are designed. At the same time as a speciﬁc artifact is designed, a set of rules for its use is decided.” Rules for the use of artifacts becomes particularly important when the artifact is new to the person using it. If it is unfamiliar to them, or is a familiar artifact Chapter 2. Related Works 15 but unfamiliar in a certain context, then it becomes diﬃcult for them to envision engagement with that artifact. Rules help to initiate interaction with artifacts. It might be wise to consider that excessive rules are potentially harmful to the artifact’s use, they may be diﬃcult to understand or cause too much worry about following the rules. Rather, guidelines should be considered to help explain the use of an artifact and thus suggest to the participant that it is not mandatory but simply suggested, making them far more comfortable using the artifact. The majority of Brandt’s work is spent discussing participatory design and its role in workshops. She oﬀers a guideline for the design and use of mock-ups, describes how to facilitate dialogue and develops methods of planning (or not planning), involving the user, and stressing the importance of learning from participant’s varied backgrounds. It can be understood from Brandt’s experiences that cross disciplinary workshops in a complex design process can help drive the process forward, creating new opportunities and ideas through discussion and prototyping. 2.4 Learning and Meaning Making from Erling Bj¨rgvinsson’s o Socio-Material Mediations In his dissertation, Erling Bj¨rgvinsson discusses context speciﬁc socio-material meaning o making using prototyping and ethnographically inspired local practices. Designers must concentrate on developing prototyping practices for speciﬁc contexts so a shared language can be developed. Bj¨rgvinsson discusses how people come to understand their o roles within a given context based on social framing, people understand and accept which roles they play, and what knowledge will likely be exchanged given an understanding of the social context. Bj¨rgvinsson explains: communications are a matter of o relationship to others within the context, rather than just the content being communicated. This is synonymous with Brandt, who explores how communication between people, despite diﬀerent backgrounds is important, rather than just any communication between any people, or between people from the same background. Bj¨rgvinsson o supports this by saying how speciﬁc language practices are developed within a speciﬁc context. Bj¨rgvinsson further explains that this communication, and the learning and o knowing that takes place leads to meaning making; with both ”human and non-human elements”. Within TAT a number of design practices can be considered ’non-human’ practices, the use of prototypes, sketching, mood boards and more, however these elements are all made through meaning-making conducted by humans. People discuss and connect with each other, creating meanings based on social, material or cultural values Chapter 2. Related Works 16 (or a combination thereof) and create non-human artifacts that push forward processes that humans drive. Bj¨rgvinsson explains his view of design research and interaction design. He explains o that design research envisions what can be, and does not only focus on the present situation. He explains, ”interaction design is not designing discrete artifacts, but rather socio-material circumstances where designed artifacts play an important role in facilitating and mediating and structuring human action.” The described circumstances designed through interaction design are of interest; the creation of experience in a place, and evaluating what roles both participants and artifacts play. Interaction design does not need to follow the paradigm of industrial design, an artifact need not be created, an experience, a socio-material circumstance, a feeling, an interaction can be created, and from this, meaning can be extracted and interpreted. 2.5 Prototyping Prototyping was a major focus of this study. It is essential to create quick ideas that could move forward as concepts and was applicable to both my process and the demo process at TAT. Flexibility was needed throughout the design stages to promote creative thinking and to allow people to feel at ease with considering new ideas and processes. Prototyping can, and in many cases, should, be spontaneous. It can be a collection of materials at one moment and a tangible concept the next. The ability to prototype ad hoc, is powerful; ideas can rapidly be shaped, conceptualized, tested and improved, without elaborate planning or material preparation. Creativity can be exploited in the moment rather than saved for later reﬂection when the moment of ingenuity may have passed. Further, prototyping in action is necessary to get spontaneously creative results. Tom Kelley of IDEO explains how he has used prototyping in action, explaining it as both a culture and a language. [? ] He describes several examples, using an ice cream freezer to test the capabilities of skiing goggles, making creative use of a half built power plant as an emergency ﬁlming location, and describes the incredible journey of Amazon.com creator Jeﬀ Bezos, who packed up and moved to Seattle, and built Amazon.com along the way, emphasizing how poerful prototyping in action can be. These are all examples of prototyping in action, saving time by thinking creatively about how to test out a solution. Kelley says, ”Quick prototyping is about acting before you’ve got the answers, about taking chances stumbling a little, but then making it right.” [? ] He describes the tangible qualities of prototypes, and explores how people react to being able to handle a concept. Kelley describes an engineer, ”He’ll often know it’s not Chapter 2. Related Works 17 the solution he wants, but if he prototypes it, he can shoot it down faster and then ﬁnd out what doesn’t work, or perhaps discover something new.” Prototyping can be the key to idea formation. Meetings, workshops, interviews, observations, and other ethnographically inspired interaction design practices have many uses in their own ways, oﬀering concrete data that helps to deﬁne a problem area or solution but prototyping takes it one step further, sparking creativity and testing potential solutions rather than just deﬁning areas that the solution might lay within. Prototyping can be ﬁxed, one solution does not ﬁt all the problems that will be thrown at prototyping; instead it is necessary to understand ﬁrst what the main issue is, focusing on how to ﬁnd that issue and using prototyping to explore it. Hartman et al discuss d.tools, a prototyping program that involves interactive components to help designers prototype, record, and test with users. [11] This is the other side of prototyping, giving ideas life through software, making them more ’usable’ than the plastic and cardboard versions of IDEO. d.tools prototypes physical UIs, focusing on devices, and having running hardware and software. This is a second stage of the prototyping process, far more advances and detailed than a paper prototype might be. This method focuses on iterative prototyping and highlights the importance of moving forward via prototyping. In the introduction to d.Tools, the designers explain the background of product design, ”Successful product designs result from a series of “conversations with materials.” Here, the “conversations” are interactions between the designer and the design medium — sketching on paper, shaping clay, building with foam core” and further explain how d.tools allows the designer to work through ideas, rather than to just think through them. Prototyping can provide an outlet for communication in a tangible manner, explaining thoughts explicitly. d.tools gives designers the tools that they can’t create quickly themselves, allowing them to easily express and test their concepts. As opposed to the d.tools example of ’high-ﬁ’ technology, prototyping can also be considered low-ﬁ, ”a low-ﬁdelity prototype can be the communication medium by which requirements can be articulated. A prototype can serve as the common language to which users and developers can relate.” Rudd et al warn designers not to get involved in the details when doing low ﬁdelity prototyping, that it should instead focus on the common language and rapid generation of ideas. [12] Prototyping in action can mean using whatever is available right now to test concepts and push ideas forward. Nancy Frishberg discusses ”Prototyping with Junk” [11] another type of low-ﬁ prototyping; taking miscellaneous objects and pushing communication through them. Frishberg explains: Chapter 2. Related Works 18 We take paper prototyping one step further. We bring the materials of kindergarten to the world of design to achieve at least four goals. Prototyping with junk... • makes you talk: encourages communication both within a team, and between the team and other stakeholders (Prototyping with Junk:) • makes design tangible: gives a product concept or workﬂow a physical instantiation • costs little: quickly visualizes proposed solutions with little investment of time or money • promotes fun at work: The playful attitudes that are associated with these materials allow creativity to blossom. Frishberg discusses how this method increases communication between participants, and focuses on non-linear thinking, further she emphasizes, ”The discussions during prototyping accomplished two goals: i) deepening everyone’s understanding of the speciﬁc problem (workﬂow for “ﬁnd”); and ii) causing strangers to become collaborators.”. This correlates to Brandt’s work, strangers, in Brandt’s work, are participants from diﬀerent disclipines, they may know each other but don’t know each other’s responsibilities. Collaboration is key to Brandt’s workshops and in Frishbergs, collaboration brings the strangers together. These concepts, and my own experience with prototyping during past projects has contributed to the prototyping done within this study. Brandt and Bj¨rgvinsson involve participants in the design process; Bj¨rgvinsson has his o o participants independently create videos to share meaning based on participant’s own knowledge and experience, whereas Brandt makes a point of ﬁnding customers, designers and stakeholders within a given process and involving them equally in workshops. Involving the participant in the design process is a common theme throughout all works; Gaver et al, go one step further, and hand over the design process to the participant with the use of the cultural probe. Bj¨rgvinsson’s participant’s take charge of their process o with self produced video just as participants conducting a cultural probe create their own content. They originally proposed the concept of cultural probes, and have now introduced an updated paper, re-examining the probes. They explain probes as ”collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from people—not comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary clues about their lives and thoughts.” [22] (Gaver et al, 2004). They further explain that probes provide a design approach that ”values uncertainty, play, exploration, and subjective interpretation”. Lucero et al Chapter 2. Related Works 19 (Lucero, 2007) support that probes ”may be perceived as fragmented, too detailed, or even sometimes irrelevant” but that ”probes usually provide a wide range of potential ideas leading to other possible solutions. The ﬁnal chosen solution will depend on the skillfulness of the design team to translate the ﬁndings into a ﬁnal concept.” [23] 2.6 Meaning: Understanding meaning and metaphor from Where the Action Is by Paul Dourish, The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design, a thesis by Dan Saﬀer and Design Noir by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby Meaning and metaphor play a signiﬁcant role in this study. Understanding how the construction and sharing of meaning across competencies can lead to interpretation was the focus of this study. This required an exploration of how metaphor and meaning play parts within TAT’s demo process. Meaning is the important part of metaphor, without meaning, metaphor is useless, people don’t grasp why they are being shown a metaphor unless there is meaning attached to it that is relevant. Saﬀer explains metaphor in his thesis on Interaction Design, he describes how designers can use metaphor in both their design process and their produced artefact. [13] He explains how metaphor allows for redeﬁnition of problems, to look at them from a diﬀerent perspective, not as problems but as opportunities. ”Designers can use the metaphor(s) that have been generated as a communication tool to convey concepts to the other members of the project team.” Metaphor helps to communicate meaning, and thus is a basis tool for interpretation, since interpretation is, in one sense, passing meaning from one person to another. Metaphor can facilitate this transfer. Dourish examines metaphor, speciﬁcally in the case of UI design. He says, ”Metaphor is such a rich model for conveying ideas that it is quite natural that it should be incorporated into the design of user interfaces.” [14] He discusses how UI design contains metaphor, the desktop, ﬁles, copying, pasting, and explores ”coupling”: the metaphor as attached to what it’s referring to, how long must the coupling last to transfer meaning? Interestingly, Dourish refers to metaphor rather than simile in UI design, that objects are a desktop or ﬁle. Since he discusses ”coupling” however, this indicates an awareness that metaphor is not present, ”coupling” implies simile, reference, but not actually becoming the thing in question. Metaphor must be carefully used and in examining design research: understanding metaphor and simile must be distinct from one another to avoid confusion. Chapter 2. Related Works 20 Design Noir examines meaning in an entirely diﬀerent way, showing how the creation of uncomfortable or unusual circumstances causes one to question their experience, and thus leads to critical examination of experience. [15] They explain that discussion and debate must be pushed onwards by ”developing alternative and often gently provocative artefacts which set to engage people through humor, insight, surprise and wonder.” They explain how values, social and cultural lend themselves to meaning, that meaning can be created by creating ”value ﬁctions”, ﬁctional social and cultural values attributed to objects to push imagination into understanding new meanings. Creating opportunities to understand meaning, whether through metaphor, simile, or alternative values or artefacts is a beneﬁt when designing tools for interpretation. Meaning can be presented and interpretations made, but until an opportunity presents itself, wherein a chance to conﬁrm interpretation (and thus meaning) exists, there is no actual clear communication present. Clear communication where both parties share meaning, share interpretation and share understanding, is the ultimate goal in any communication transaction. 2.7 Summary of Related Works This chapter explores three main authors and two additional subject themes to create a basis for this study. By ﬁrst examining the role of workshops and collaborative learning and then moving on to design research methods by Cross and Bj¨rgvinsson, I am able o to compare the methods of design research and gain from them an understanding of the basic goals while conducting research. Cross identiﬁes the need to focus on initial reactions and to strive for the Creative Leap, focusing on the key areas in design research that pushes the rest of the design process. Bj¨rgvinsson focuses on the meaning and o learning that goes on behind this research; he suggests methods of conducting research using ethnographically inspired practices and explores the importance of context. I then move on to look at particular subjects, prototyping methods and the use of meaning and metaphor. These methods arise repeatedly throughout this study and it was important to understand multiple perspectives of attaining meaning in order to develop tools for interpretation: the basis of meaning. I found Brandt’s study very valuable, it acted as a guide book on workshops and collaborative learning, it helped to structure my workshops and to provide insight on both potential problems and opportunities. Cross and Bj¨rgvinsson provide interesting backo ground on two diﬀerent approaches to design research. Both were inspirational, Cross’ being more of a textbook approach, explaining speciﬁc stages and steps that one should Chapter 2. Related Works 21 be aware of. Bj¨rgvinsson’s acted as a learn-by-example, wherein his extensive studies o into the medical community provided deep insight into many areas of meaning, prototyping, ethnographical practices and collaborative learning. Metaphor plays such an important role in interaction design, helping to explain situations, to prototype, to go through design research, to use as both a minor and major tool when working with participants and it was problematic to explore this topic in terms of examples in interaction design. Dourish provides a very theoretical perspective of metaphor, Dunne and Raby explain how it can be used in more than just a typical manner, Saﬀer explores metaphor as a tool, and Bj¨rgvinsson mentions metaphor as a o social mechanism to facilitate meaning. Metaphor can act as the causeway for meaning but meaning must still be interpreted; one person’s intended meaning and the other person’s perceived meaning can be two very diﬀerent things. Thus, a tool for interpretation could be useful to help make sure that both parties are sending and receiving meaning clearly, and as it was intended. Reddy’s Conduit Metaphor [? ] explains how words are ideas that are packaged, and are waiting to be unpacked; these words go back and forth in the conduit and become meaning when unpacked. However, communication is rarely so straightforward or undisturbed. If we consider, instead of a conduit, an underground sewage pipe, then attaining shared meaning is more like two people communicating via radio to try an navigate a third person through the pipe. These two people are on the outside of the pipe and are reviewing blue prints while on the radio. Both have equal ability to control the person’s movement. To do this successfully, they must continually re-aﬃrm meaning and negotiate shared understanding. A tool for interpretation in this case might be a camera where both parties have a video feed from the sewage pipe person’s perspective and can communicate via referencing the video, ”there’s a pole on the left, do you see it? We should move around that.” Suddenly shared meaning is actually shared, rather than assumed, and communication is much richer. A tool for interpretation could be helpful for shared understanding. It is important that the understanding people have is both useful and sensical. Further shared rather than common understanding is important, as in my own example of communicating with my boyfriend, we had a common understanding of the word ”sure” but until we negotiated meaning and came to equate it with ”helt sikker” (deﬁnitely) the meaning was not shared. Chapter 3 Method and Process 3.1 Overview of Methods and Process The methods section was designed to explore the demo process using participatory workshops and low-ﬁ prototyping techniques. A common understanding of the intricacies of the demo process needed to be uncovered. The process has been divided into a series of iterative Participatory Workshops. The nature of participatory workshops is to analyze situations and generate ideas for improvement within a group of people who are actively involved in the process. Landby describes iterative design as ”creating a design prototype, evaluating the prototype, and then repeating the process several times” and brainstorming as ”a process that moves quickly between fundamentally diﬀerent design ideas”. [16] (Landby, 1996) The workshops were designed to be iterative within each workshop. Each workshop began with a task, discussing the demo process, and through brainstorming, the process was evaluated, suggestions made, evaluated again, and discussed once more. This process happened repeatedly throughout each workshop so as to get a thorough understanding of the demo process and to generate ideas (from the participants, those who used the process the most) about how it could be improved. The structure of the workshops was built for them to be ﬁlled with dialogue and reﬂection, focusing on the process of looking for a solution. Cross and Brandt outline these processes, Cross explains the search for a solution and Brandt explores reﬂective collaboration. Cross explains design: it is constructive, ongoing, and is always seeking a solution; the workshops were constructed in such a way that they didn’t need to come to a conclusion, they examined the demo process, discussed pros and cons, and suggested improvements while seeking a solution. [10] Building on this, participants were invited to be reﬂective; Brandt discusses how ”reﬂection can take place while conducting a dialogue, while watching someone else’s gesture, while looking at other peoples’ drawings, 22 Chapter 3. Method and Process 23 when drawing ourselves, etc.” [9] Participants were encouraged to think-aloud, to share their reasoning for actions and comments. This encouraged feedback and discussion from other participants and moved the process forward. In creating workshops, the hierarchy and structure of TAT’s staﬃng was considered. (See Figure 3.1) There were eight main participants who repeatedly collaborated throughout the process of this study. These included the Chief Technology Oﬃcer, who is responsible to consider technology and technological implications in the demo process and communicates with programmers and engineers. The Lead Art Director is responsible for the holistic view of TAT’s productions. These two roles work with others in TAT to decide how the company functions and determine values and plans for the company. Following them is the Vice President of Marketing who is also responsible for demo production. He prepares marketing material for the company and guides demos to be released to the public. The Vice President of Design oversees all design activities and is responsible to determine the priorities of the design department. The Head of Interaction Design and the Design Art Director report to the Vice President of Design. The Head of Interaction Design is responsible for all interaction designers and interaction design activities within TAT. The Design Art Director represents the values of the Lead Art and communicates these while working with designers. The Products Manager is responsible for the production and communication of products within TAT, namely software and engines used by TAT (such as TAT Cascades or TAT Motion Lab). The Innovation Expert is part of Tenk, the innovation section of TAT, and is responsible to generate new concepts based on current and future trends. 3.1.1 Outline of Workshops Conducted Five workshops were conducted during this study to gain understanding of the demo process and to develop tools for interpretation. Originally, a single large workshop was planned with all stakeholders, to discuss the demo process overall. However, upon meeting time, only three participants had arrived, the Vice President of Design, the Products Manager and a Concept Designer. This meeting was quite successful and so it was decided to create three participatory workshops to try and involve all stakeholders while at the same time keeping the workshops small enough to create opportunity for productive discussion. The ﬁrst three workshops conducted were with a)Vice President of Design, Products Manager and Innovation Expert; b)Chief Technology Oﬃcer, Lead Art Director, Vice President of Marketing; and c)Head of Interaction Design and Design Art Director. Chapter 3. Method and Process 24 Of primary participants in study TAT Hierarchy Lead Art Director Chief Technology Officer Vice President Marketing Products Manager Vice President Design Tenk - Innovation Head Interaction Design Art Director Design Figure 3.1: Examining the roles of participants. These three workshops explored what the demo process was at that stage, and what was positive and negative about it. Following this was Workshop 4 in which participants brainstormed ideas about tools for innovation and what might help them through the ﬁrst stage of the demo process, the Demo Request Stage while they were deﬁning the initial concept. The ﬁnal workshop, Workshop 5 was held to test out tools conceptualized in Workshop 4. Two tools were created, UI building blocks and a Cultural Probe that would be handed out before the Demo Request initial meeting. These were tested with TAT employees in Workshop 5 and discussion was held regarding the tools and their usage. The following is a breakdown of the an explanation of methods used throughout this study, an overview of the planning and data collection and analysis of each workshop, and planning and conclusion preparation of Workshop 5. Chapter 3. Method and Process 25 3.2 3.2.1 Methods used in this study Ethnographically inspired practices Ethnographically inspired studies have been present in many interaction design studies. This includes using observation, interviews, audio and video recording, and other methods to record what happens in a given context. Throughout this study, ethnographical practices have been used extensively to record information and to understand from a direct view what is going on in a certain environment in a certain situation. Through a number of methods, a researcher can evaluate participants and context from more than a story telling perspective. Participants have a natural bias when being interviewed to give the right answers, and are sometimes even blind to what the actual situation is; they may tell it one way without realizing that their actions are diﬀerent from their words. As such, a thorough understanding of context, beyond simply interviewing is necessary to understand fully how people operate in a given context. Blomberg et al explain two vantage points when observing in ethnographical studies: that of the ”observerparticipant”; observing without interfering, quietly watching in the background, and ”participant-observer”; where the researcher is involved actively as a participant in the process. [17] Bj¨rgvinsson explains that ”ethnographers are fully aware that participant o observation does not mean that it is possible to fully see the world from the members’ point of view.” [18] Bjorgvinsson discusses his study in terms of health care so it would be impossible for the researchers (unless they had medical training) to see exactly the members’ point of view; in the case of TAT, since I was working with designers, and managers of the design process, both ﬁelds I had worked in before, it was easier to grasp the concepts of daily activity they engaged in but I did try to maintain a sense of separation to be unbiased about my observations. I was involved as a participant observer throughout my time as Demo Manager with TAT. In this role I got insight into the demo process in action. I tried to research the demo process to learn about it and became involved in it, gaining ﬁrst hand experience in the daily activities of the demo participants. I gained a glimpse into the demo world but I was still not fully immersed. For this reason, the workshops conducted helped to gain further insight, through the view of the participants about the demo process. The ethnographically inspired studies were conducted both to understand the context and participants and also to keep a record of activities for review after each workshop. During the workshop, my aim was to be fully immersed, listening to discussion and guiding activities. My role was as facilitator, not note-taker, and so I relied on audio and video recording and photographs to keep a record of activities which could be later reviewed and reﬂected upon. As Blomberg et al explain, there are ”Rules of Chapter 3. Method and Process 26 Thumb” when interviewing; a familiar setting is preferred, a good rapport should be established, do not interrupt unnecessarily, and many others; these were kept in mind during all workshops, and extended to look past interviewing and were instead used for the facilitation of workshops which I believe to be an excellent environment for considering such rules. Following is a break down of each of the methods used to record workshops and the implications associated to those. 3.2.1.1 Audio Recording Audio recordings were used in Workshops 4 and 5. These were major workshops wherein the deciding factors of the design were discussed and so it was considered that audio recordings might be useful to review the material. Workshops 1 through 3 were debate workshops where the demo process was explained and examined, these were more to create a picture of the process than to gather distinctive ideas and so the audio recordings were not as necessary since most of the discussion was in the form of white board visualizations. Since photos were taken of the whiteboards after all the visual mapping was done, this alleviated the need for detailed audio recording and instead, note taking was used as a recording method. In Workshops 4 and 5 however, there was open discussion on concepts and brainstorming, so it was beneﬁcial to review this material after the workshops. Quotes from participants helped to form reﬂections on material and helped to gather understanding of activities done in the workshops. Participants were aware they were being audio recorded but in order to make them more comfortable, a mobile phone was used to record all audio. This was a very familiar object to everyone and blended into the room easily. 3.2.1.2 Video Recording Video recording was planned to be used for each workshop. This would record the audio and the visual actions of participants. However, when video was used in Workshop 1, and participants seemed at ease with it (one participant asked that their face not be on video) it was the aftermath of the workshop that led me to believe video was unnecessary. During workshops 1 - 3, participants were having discussions and debates about the demo process. They used the white board to illustrate the process, but didn’t do any actions that were necessarily video-worthy. The whiteboard visualizations could be photographed during and after the discussions in order to provide an adequate record. After Workshop 1, there was approximately two hours worth of video to be dissected, Chapter 3. Method and Process 27 which I had grouped into themes based on what people were saying, however upon reviewing the video, it became apparent that there wasn’t a good reason to have all this video. It didn’t tell a story more thoroughly about the construction and analysis of the demo process than audio and photographs did and it was both laborious and uninspiring to go through all the video material when the audio and photographs told the same story. It was decided not to video record workshops 2, 3 or 4 for these reasons since they were discussion and not action based. Workshop 5 was entirely based on action and role-playing. For this reason, video was used. Video showed how people used the two tools developed through workshops 1 - 4 and gave an excellent breakdown of activities and responses of the group. The group was comfortable with the use of video and were only cautious about discussing conﬁdential material on video; participants were informed that no conﬁdential material would enter the thesis and would be edited out of video and audio; therefore it was okay to discuss this. Since I had been employed and in a managerial position previously at TAT I already had knowledge of this conﬁdential material so it wasn’t an issue for me to discuss it but it was necessary to remove it from video and audio recordings after the workshop. This removal did not adversely aﬀect the study in any way and had no impact on the content of the video or audio. Further, the use of video allowed me to observe and participate when needed without worry of missing something due to note taking or on-the-spot analysis. Blomberg et al also explore video as a method for seeing diﬀerent perspectives, and video oﬀered me the opportunity to see the in-action moments and then later review from a diﬀerent perspective, multiple times. [17] 3.2.1.3 Photography Photographs were used extensively to capture any visual work done, usually that which supported discussions. In Workshops 1 - 3, the whiteboard was used to map out the demo process. Photos were taken during the process of mapping in Workshop 1 and of the aftermath of the mapping process in Workshops 2 and 3. Photos were taken during Workshop 1 since the workshop was quite long (two hours) and a number of changes was made to the whiteboard over that period of time. Many of the photos taken in Workshop 1 were captured by a photographer so that I was able to fully participate within the workshop without the interruption of taking photos. For Workshops 1 - 3, I took photos after the workshops were completed and participants had left, of the ﬁnal stage of the whiteboard. Chapter 3. Method and Process 28 In Workshop 1, photographs were an interruption due to the ﬂash, participants didn’t visibly react to the camera, but it was apparent that they caused a momentary distraction and so it was decided to take photos after workshops 2 and 3 were completed, of the remaining work on the white board. In Workshop 4, a photographer was invited into the room once the brainstorming process begin, after a presentation had been made. This gave participants the opportunity to have open discussion without distraction and then once they were wandering around the room (as assigned during the workshop) posting their thoughts on papers tacked to the walls, the photographer took photos of their actions at this point. Photos were also taken once participants had left Workshop 4. In Workshop 5, several photos were taken during the workshop but an awareness of the distraction was present, so I tried to keep photos to a minimum and relied instead on video. All photographs taken were of value. In workshops 1 - 3, photographs gave an insight into the demo process discussed and acted as a reminder of what people were discussing. Photographs from Workshop 1 especially were useful since the photos were of notes posted on the whiteboard, and of the demo process as a series of actions, reactions and responses. In the photo series from Workshop 4 it was interesting to review how people participated and the comments made. The Workshop 5 photographs helped to identify actions taken and highlighted the use of the developed tools. 3.2.2 Participatory Design as a Practice As discussed by Brandt [9] and Bj¨rgvinsson [18] participatory design was key to the o creation and conduct of all workshops. Throughout all workshops done for this study, the aim was to have people from diﬀerent backgrounds and competencies involved in each workshop. Although workshops had themes, such as primary stakeholders or design department these groupings had diﬀerent competencies, and a diﬀerent point of view from one another. For example, within the design department grouping, there was an interaction designer and an art director. These are two diﬀerent disciplines but the people often work together, so it oﬀered an opportunity for exploration of each other’s roles. Each workshop was constructed to allow full participation from participants. Participants were guided in the subject nature of the workshop, to discuss the demo process (Workshops 1 - 3), to brainstorm interpretation tools (Workshop 4) or to role-play using the tools developed (Workshop 5). From this point, the workshop belonged to the participants. Their discussion and actions carried the workshop forward. I acted as a Chapter 3. Method and Process 29 facilitator, guiding when needed, answering questions when asked and encouraging when there were times of hesitation or silence. Participants were encouraged to collaborate, to build upon each other’s comments and actions, and to learn from each other during the workshops. Collaboration is discussed by Brandt who focuses on the learning that occurs from collaboration. [9] Participants were thus encouraged to share verbally and through gestures, whiteboard use, sketching or any other means, their thoughts to create a collaborative environment wherein one comment could build upon another until learning was achieved. 3.2.3 Prototyping as a Practice Prototyping as a method of testing has been used extensively in this study and below in Methods used during design process at TAT a full exploration of various prototyping methods will be provided. Prototyping is important to collaborative design processes. It was important for my process to quickly generate ideas and to understand the demo process. It was important to TAT’s demo process because it oﬀered quick solutions that could be easily tested without much interference within their very busy schedules. Brandt, Bj¨rgvinsson, Blomberg et al, and many others explore prototyping in their o work. Brandt suggests that prototyping oﬀers a quick perspective of an explanation (whether it be a problem, solution or part of the process) and can be changed easily. [9] Bj¨rgvinsson and Blomberg et al explore the nature of prototyping, how it can be o done to facilitate the connection between needs of users and design possibilities. [17] In the workshops conducted for this study, prototyping allowed TAT participants to see things from diﬀerent perspectives within the company, and to explore design prototyping exercises they hadn’t tried as a company before. This was especially useful considering the nature of the participants, who all came from some type of design background or whom had been involved in the design process throughout their careers. Many of the participants work within the design process on a daily basis and oﬀering them a new perspective, or a way to quickly try new things without depending on budgets, resources or project requirements oﬀered a rewarding experience for both participants and myself. 3.2.3.1 Low-Fi Prototyping Low-Fi prototpying, the method of quickly putting together elements whether it be through sketching, assembling pieces of materials, or using everyday objects to communicate an idea, was oﬀered as a method during the workshops. [12] Participants were encouraged to try low-ﬁ prototyping to get their ideas across; since TAT uses low-ﬁ Chapter 3. Method and Process 30 prototyping in many of their meetings (using post it notes as image place holders or sketching up something quickly on the whiteboard) they were familiar with this and it was easy for them to participate in. 3.2.4 Methods used during design process at TAT Facilitating workshops required encouragement and easy to understand instructions so participants could quickly and easily begin collaborating together. A number of methods were used to help guide this process; among these, methods were also suggested to use within TAT’s demo process to help them. Many of these examples have been used by me in previously completed projects throughout my education. I have found them to be useful because they are processes which people do naturally in their everyday behavior. With friends, we tell the stories of our days, perhaps of the last time we tried to parallel park, and we re-enact the situation, role-playing ourselves, or perhaps in the case of the parallel parking, the horriﬁed onlookers. We sketch out what we mean, either on paper, napkins or the nearest whiteboard to further demonstrate our point, ”the car was here, the curb was like this, I came in at this angle,”. We reference past examples, ”last time I tried to parallel park, I simply aimed the car’s back end towards the middle of the car I would be parking in front of, easy!” We brainstorm, with our friends, come up with creative solutions for parallel parking, ”couldn’t the wheels just turn sideways?”. These practices of storytelling, visualization, role playing, past examples are all things that people naturally do, there are many schools of thought on each of them, some of which I’ve referenced here, but much of the guidance I oﬀered during workshops that used these practices came from my own observations of the everyday use of these practices. 3.2.4.1 Story Telling Storytelling is the practice of explaining events from a particular or multiple perspectives. It is used to convey meanings, messages, to explain situations. Rodrigues et al explore story telling in participatory games. [19] They explain how participation and interaction of the characters is explored through story telling; and further that a story can be plot or character based. This point is key to using story telling in a business environment, is it the employee or the process that is being explored? Which one should be focused on? Does the process (plot) have a greater impact than the employee (character) or do they both factor in equally? Storytelling can help to understand the demo process and the roles people play in that process. In the case of TAT it can also help participants to understand each other’s roles more thoroughly. Chapter 3. Method and Process 31 The use of past examples, referring to explicit examples through story telling, helps to illustrate aspects of a story that are of particular note. In the case of TAT, the use of past examples could highlight times during the demo process when something happened that could be learned from, or it could mean the use of an older demo to show features that are desirable or undesirable. Past examples have the capacity to work like storytelling, explaining perspectives and plot but also can reference speciﬁc concepts which can help to deﬁne the current situation. Participants were encouraged to recall past examples to help illustrate their point, and in Workshop 4 to consider the use of past examples of demos to evaluate ideas for future demos. 3.2.4.2 Sketching Preece et al explore Paper Prototyping in their book, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. [21] They explain that sketching allows for multiple perspectives to be considered at once; sketching is a ”rapid method to collaborate, prototype, evaluate and iterate”. Further, since anyone can sketch something it creates a common tool for communication. In TAT’s demo process, designers who sketch professionally are involved and as a result, there are varying levels of sketching that should be considered. Sketching can be a quick way to illustrate an idea that cannot be explained easily verbally as in the case of the white board visualization, or sketching can be a detailed description of elements within a design. For the purpose of the workshops conducted where process was being explored, the quick illustration-of-concept method was encouraged. Later, in Workshop 4, sketching was discussed as a method of interpretation, but again in the sense of quickly illustrating an idea rather than creating a detailed drawn mock up of a concept. White board visualizations are another type of sketching method to visually explain what one is discussing. Participants might draw arrows, or simply replace hand gestures with pen strokes. In the case of the demo process exploration, participants were encouraged to map out the demo process as they saw it and as it should be. This practice can also be a form of mind mapping, drawing associations between concepts or processes and creating connections between items. Mindmap.com gives suggestions on mind mapping, encouraging free associations to connect concepts or processes without hesitation, to think quickly, to not judge and to continue mapping. [20] This method was ideal for mapping the demo process although participants were invited to comment throughout the mapping process; to reﬂect and criticize since the process was being mapped and revised on the ﬂy. Chapter 3. Method and Process 3.2.4.3 Role Playing 32 Role playing is useful to understand situations from another person’s perspective. It is also useful to act out scenarios to predict results of certain actions. Role playing involves acting out a situation or portraying a person’s roles and responsibilities in a dramatized manner. In the workshops, role playing helped to explain situations or actions that people might make. A participant might say ”if I were the customer, I might think that...” they put themselves in the role of the customer, and consider things from the customer’s point of view. In Workshop 5 role-playing was used to test out a situation, so each participant acted in their role, and behaved as if they would in a real situation as opposed to a dramatized situation. Role playing is useful to identify traits or perspectives that need attention and to predict potential outcomes that could not have been foreseen without testing. 3.2.4.4 Brainstorming Brainstorming is the process of idea generation. Brainstorming is essentially a creative process wherein people contribute ideas that are typically not judged, but instead contribute to an overall pool of ideas which are later evaluated. Brainstorming helps to create an open environment wherein people can freely contribute concepts, ideas, and commentary; ideally this is done without judgement or restriction. Participants are invited to evaluate the brainstormed ideas once the brainstorming process is complete and everyone is satisﬁed that they’ve contributed their ideas. Usually a time limit is put on brainstorming to encourage quick idea generation without too much thought processing, much like the mind mapping process. In Workshop 4, brainstorming was used to generate ideas about a tool for interpretation, and participants were given 10 minutes to brainstorm ideas before discussion of the results started. Brainstorming has been used oﬃcially and unoﬃcially (happening naturally) throughout all the workshops to understand and evaluate the demo process and to develop tools for interpretation. 3.2.5 Creative Surprises as a Practice The goal of each workshop was to see what issues would arise through discussion of participants. Brandt discusses her method: to have an undeﬁned expectation of what would happen, ”the collaborative meetings and how these were facilitated depended more on what happened - on what Whyte above calls ’creative surprises’.” The concept of creative surprises allowed collaboration to proceed openly, and allowed for participants to be free in their brainstorming, mind mapping, and discussions in the hopes that the Chapter 3. Method and Process 33 creative surprises would lead to new ideas. Cross discusses the Creative Leap, the moment when a design problem is bridged with an idea leading towards its solution. [10] The creative surprise and Creative Leap were anticipated moments throughout all workshops. It was hoped that participants would reach these moments through their discussion and that these moments would lead to tools for interpretation, as they did in Workshops 4 and 5. 3.2.5.1 Attachment to Concepts: A problem to keep watch for Allowing participants to freely generate concepts and to pursue the Creative Leap, can result in an attachment to a favorite idea. Attachment to concepts was a concern throughout the workshops, and was deﬁned as a common design trap. Throughout this study that trap was considered and accounted for through the participatory nature of the study; the participants were able to debate ideas rather than a declaration of solution by me. In this way, participants were also generating alternatives; Cross cautions against generating a wide range of alternatives, instead focusing on a limited amount. Thus, in Workshop 4, participants were given some deﬁned ideas for tools for interpretation and had the opportunity, within ten minutes to create other tools or to evaluate the ideas given. This created a time and space restriction so as to reign in the design process. 3.2.5.2 Emergent Design Emergent design was an important concept throughout the workshops. Because brainstorming, discussions, mind mapping, and creative surprises were all occurring, it was important to realize when these constituted a change in design. Emergent design is when a designed object is used for something other than its intended purpose, design qualities emerge that were not initially intended or planned for. [10] As with creative surprises, emergence uncovers the unforeseen and creates interesting uses of a designed artifact. 3.2.5.3 Flexibility as a rule Cross emphasizes a focus on a structured process and opportunistic behavior. [10] The workshops to determine the current process at TAT were originally structured to be a single workshop involving all stake holders, however in an interesting twist of fate, three didn’t show up to that ﬁrst workshop. Flexibility was required to change the plan to hold a second and third meeting, in which I discovered the opportunity to book meetings according to company structure. The next two meetings contained a)CTO, Lead Art Chapter 3. Method and Process 34 Director and Vice President of Marketing and b)Head of Interaction Design and Design Art Director, two very diﬀerent groups who may not have functioned well together in one big meeting; one group may not have been comfortable to speak freely in front of the other. Further, the initial meeting coincidentally composed of employees who were all comfortable discussing issues with each other since they commonly worked together in the demo process. Cross cautions against ”rigid over-structured approaches” which I had initially intended upon with the ﬁrst workshop, but surprisingly, and luckily was deprived of. After this, workshops were made to be ﬂexible, to recognize opportunity and to allow for creativity through openness. 3.2.6 Staging: Creating atmosphere Staging refers to how the workshops were set up to create the right atmosphere for collaborative discussion and interaction. Brandt discusses the concept of staging with her workshops; although participants knew each other, and ”the atmosphere became more relaxed”, there was the ”tendency for participants not to really listen to what is being said because they believe (erroneously of course) that everyone knows all about everyone else.” (Brandt, 2001) [9] Participants were therefore encouraged to take turns talking and notes were made about each comment. Staging was also present in the number of participants, each workshop was relatively small, with Workshops 1 - 3 having three or less participants, Workshop 4 having ﬁve participants and Workshop 5 having four participants. This encouraged more intimate form of discussion where people could easily listen to each other and there was more of a living room style conversation than that of a board room. Participants were thus more comfortable discussing things with each other and more likely to share since they felt comfortable contributing. 3.3 Workshops - Overview of Workshops 1 - 5 and Data Collection Methods 3.3.1 Workshop 1 Introduction The intention of Workshop 1 was to guide participants through a process of analysis and critique of the demo process and to eventually bring them to idea generation about how to improve the demo process. While this happened to a degree, the formal structure did not hold well, and so the following two workshops were held much more informally, with ﬁrst three then two participants standing in front of a white board, markers in Chapter 3. Method and Process 35 hand, and discussions pending. The workshops built upon the previous one, the ﬁrst one guiding the following workshops. This workshop was intended to have the presence of the Vice President of Marketing, the Chief Technology Oﬃcer, the CEO, the Lead Art Director, the Vice President of Design, the Products Manager and an Innovation Expert. However, only the last three attended the meeting. It was scheduled to be two hours and took approximately 1.5 hours to complete. 3.3.1.1 Testing Workshop 1 To test if workshop 1 would function well, a small experiment test-workshop was set up to do three things: test the method of conducting workshops that I had designed; to get an idea of the types of answers I might encounter; and, to make myself more comfortable in my role as facilitator. In the ﬁrst test, a white board was used to sketch out how the demo process might be structured, and using post-it notes, I developed a series of possible actions that could happen at each stage of the demo process. These were ”Demo Request”, ”Wireframes”, ”Design”, ”Development”, and ”Prototype”. Three thesis students working at TAT assisted in the testing of the functionality of the workshop. These students were also given a choice of post it notes which had written on them ”Feedback”, ”Revision”, ”Presentation”, and ”Bomb”. (Figure 3.1) Feedback referred to a meeting held to give feedback on the demo. Revision indicated where revisions should be done. Presentation indicated where a presentation should take place. Bomb indicated where a major problem that might stop the process could exist. Students were asked to write the stages ( ”Demo Request”, ”Wireframes”, ”Design”, ”Development”, and ”Prototype”) on the board in the order which they thought the process was currently carried out and then to add post it notes where they thought each action would be necessary. This test workshop provided the necessary information to carry out the actual workshop, guiding how the stages and post it notes might be used. (Figure 3.2) 3.3.1.2 Setup: Workshop 1 Procedure Each person was requested to outline the demo process using stages including: “Demo Requests”, “Wireframes”, “Design”, “Development”, “Prototyping”, and “Other”. These terms had been printed on paper, and cut out to be individual components. Participants Chapter 3. Method and Process 36 Figure 3.2: Themed Post-it Notes were used to explore the demo process. Figure 3.3: Using the white board to test how the workshop would operate. Chapter 3. Method and Process 37 were given a blank sheet of paper on which to re-arrange the components in an order that made sense to them. (Figure 3.3) Figure 3.4: Stages of the demo process, cut out in paper to be rearranged accordingly. Collaborative: Participants were then asked to move to the white board so that collaborative process sketching could begin. On the white board was placed a typical internal demo process and participants outlined what would and should happen in each stage. Introduced were Post-it Notes with the following themes: Presentation, Feedback, Revision, Question, and Bomb (indicating a major setback). Participants indicated at each stage the things they liked, disliked and wanted improved. Participants were encouraged to use talk aloud methods - talking out loud about what each of their actions was as they posted themes on the white board or as they deﬁned the process. Discussion: Participants then took approximately 30 minutes to discuss results, thoughts, and suggestions for improvement. Ethnographic practices: Throughout the workshop photographs and video were captured. Observation occurred through visual and auditory observation, and notes were taken on people’s comments. Participants were asked questions to further conversation or to re-direct conversation if Chapter 3. Method and Process 38 it was oﬀ track. Questions to further conversation were strictly considered before asking so as to maintain an unbiased view. Workshops 2 and 3 were based on the format of Workshop 1 however instead of being held formally in a board room, with a large white board and strict guidelines, they were instead held in an oﬃce with a smaller white board and a small area so as to encourage more informal conversation. 3.3.2 Workshop 2 and 3, Overview of Format and Structure Participants were instructed to stand, rather than sit to promote participating in writing on the white board. Each participant was given a marker and participants were asked to create a diagram of their impression of the structure for the Demo Process stages. Participants were then asked, as in Workshop 1 to place on the white board, the post-it note themes. Participants were then encouraged to discuss the demo process, and their impressions, frustrations and suggestions for improvement. Within the suggestions for improvement, the participants were able to use the white board to sketch a new process. Participants were again encouraged to talk aloud about what they wrote on the white board and why they placed Post-it Note themes where they did. When crafting a new process, participants were encouraged to explain their line of thought. Participants were introduced to the ideas and comments from the ﬁrst workshop, and were able to freely comment or make suggestions for improvement. 3.3.3 Workshop 2 Aim and Participants The aim of Workshop 2 was to gather information from participants about their thoughts on the demo process and how it might be improved. Workshop 2 was composed of the Vice President of Marketing, the Chief Technology Oﬃcer, and the Lead Art Director and was scheduled for one hour. 3.3.4 Workshop 3 Aim and Participants Workshop 3 included the Lead Interaction Design and the Art Director for Design. This workshop was created to gain insight from an interaction design and design perspective on the demo process. Chapter 3. Method and Process 39 3.3.5 Workshops 1 - 3 Data collection and analysis Workshops 1 - 3 were designed to gather background information, attitudes, and concepts regarding the demo process. A fourth workshop was then designed, based on the information from these workshops. Before workshop four was designed, the information from workshops 1 - 3 was gathered and analyzed. Data from workshops 1 - 3 was collected by compiling survey results and grouping information into themes. Video was ﬁrst analyzed by reviewing and grouping it into sections based on subject. These subjects included topics such as ”Demo Request Stage”, ”Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen”, ”Feedback” and other categories based on notes that had been taken throughout the workshop highlighting key topics of discussion. Once video had been reviewed and titled, notes were carefully examined to determine speciﬁc themes which arose. Six themes were identiﬁed: • Demo Request Stage • Customer Projects • Constructive Feedback • Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen • Process Look and Feel • More Professional Approach Workshop 1 - Data Collection Since Workshop 1 had made extensive use of post-it notes to write down comments, ideas or complaints, and because the post-it notes had been prepared with icons for Presentation, Feedback, Revision, Question, and Bomb, notes were organized into these categories ﬁrst, then separated into the six themes. Commentary that had not been put on post-it notes but that had been noted in the Workshop or via the video were also put into the categories and themes. Workshops 2 + 3 - Data Collection Since Workshop 2 and 3 had a similar format, their data collection process was identical. Extensive detailed notes were taken in the Workshop and these notes, with the aid of a photograph of the white board, were categorized into the post-it note categories (Presentation, Feedback, Revision, Question, and Bomb) and into themes. Chapter 3. Method and Process 40 Categorization was done by ﬁrst typing up all notes into three sections, one for each workshop. Diﬀerent colored pens were then used to underline notes in which themes were found. These colors were then grouped together, for example, the Demo Request Stage was underlined red wherever it occurred, and then all red objects were grouped together to form a new document for that theme. 3.3.6 Workshop 4 Outline: Brainstorming ideas for tools for interpretation The purpose of Workshop 4 was to introduce preliminary conclusions to participants, and explain how the Demo-Request stage was important to the rest of the process. Participants were asked to brainstorm ideas of ways to create prototypes or mockups based on simple requests from customer. Participants involved were: Vice President of Marketing, Head of Interaction Design, Chief Technology Oﬃcer, Lead Art Director and Vice President of Design. Participants engaged in collaborative brainstorming and were asked the following questions: Questions: • How do we create dialogue with customer about what they want, speciﬁcally? • What makes a good concept? • What needs to be considered when creating a demo concept? Participants were introduced to suggested tools for communicating ideas which had been decided upon before the workshop began. These tools were posted on walls on sheets of paper. For each tool (and each one developed) participants would around the room and post up a Post-it note about what they thought of that tool and how it would work, whether it was good or bad and its pros and cons. Participants discussed as a group the concept of interpretation and the move from desire to concept. (15 Minutes) Participants placed their thoughts about each of the presented tools on the sheets of paper and add their own new tool ideas to sheets of blank paper. (10 Minutes) Posted comments were reviewed and discussion of each tool and of newly proposed tools was held. (30 Minutes) Data Collection: Chapter 3. Method and Process 41 This session was audio taped and extensive notes were taken. The audio taped was transcribed verbatim, (Appendix x.x) and from that, discussion was analyzed for each tool. The two main tools that emerged from this workshop, the cultural probe for customers and the UI building blocks, were then considered and prepared for Workshop 5. 3.3.7 Workshop 5 Outline: Exploring the tools: Customer kit and UI building blocks Workshop 5 was designed to foster a creative environment where participants could role-play and brainstorm ideas. The purpose of Workshop 5 was to test the resulting ideas from Workshop 4, those that the participants were interested in pursuing since they were ”new ideas” that hadn’t been used at TAT before. These two ideas were the concept of creating a customer kit, that the customer would complete before coming to the initial meeting to gain an idea of their likes, dislikes and design attitude and preferences. The second idea was that of UI building blocks, objects that could act as place holders to be used while describing the desire of the customer. Present at the meeting were: Innovation Designer, Lead Interaction Designer, Design Art Director, and a TAT Designer. 3.3.7.1 Cultural Probes A cultural probe was developed as a tool for interpretation. For the task of understanding the customer’s background (by which I mean their tastes, likes, dislikes, not their typical information) and to gain insight, probes are the ideal introduction to the customer, giving clues, providing a basis for exploration, and ultimately giving the TAT team a preliminary introduction so that when the time for interpretation comes, they have an advantage. For the TAT team, their goal is simply to gain an understanding of the customers. The probes will act a starting point, an introduction to the customer who then introduces their desire; the TAT team then takes both these inputs to begin interpretation. Lucero et al correlate this goal by explaining, ”one of the aims of the approach is to create a communication link between the users and the designers, and to inform and inspire the design team.” Chapter 3. Method and Process 3.3.7.2 Cultural Probe Design 42 The cultural probe was designed to be done rapidly since the customer wouldn’t have much time. Further, its purpose was to encourage creative thinking in the customer. The cultural probe was designed by asking participants via email what they thought should be included in the probe. This was done after Workshop 4, while the idea was still fresh in their minds. Appendix D shows this email and two of the answers provided. From this, the probe was developed by me; I created, from participant’s suggestions, the questions, and the look and feel of the probe. The probe was put into a brightly colored box so it would be aesthetically pleasing, and was adorned with TAT logo elements to associate it to TAT. The type-written introduction explained it as ”The Juice Box”. (Figure 3.4) The Juice Box would help the customer get their ”creative juices ﬂowing”. Inside were seven items with small tasks that the customer had to complete. These included: • Clear Plastic Box : with tag, ”Place in this box something you value but can part with easily” • Battery : with tag, ”If you could give yourself a boost of energy during the day when would it be?” • LED Light : with tag, ”What’s been your brightest idea today?” • Paper with four printed fonts : ”Favorite Font?” • Spoon : with tag, ”Spoon it up. What would you like to be eating right now?” • 3 Photos : with tag, ”Choose a car: Volvo, Mustang, DB7” • 3 Photos : with tag, ”Choose a chair: white, orange, brown” The entire box was given to the person role-playing the customer approximately 30 minutes before Workshop 5. 3.3.7.3 UI Building Blocks The purpose of the workshop was for the person role-playing the customer to describe a desire, and for the role-played TAT team to use objects to describe how it might work, move, look, or feel. The customer could also use items to explain visually what they would like the demo achieve. Chapter 3. Method and Process 43 Figure 3.5: Prototype of Juice Box including 7 tasks for customer to complete. The UI building blocks were originally suggested to be tangible representations of UI components, for example, a plastic scroll bar or a printed menu button that could be assembled on the table. After discussion in Workshop 4 however, it was determined that these objects would be too concrete in concept and would not allow for the creativity needed to create a new idea. In a project several years ago, designing a baby high chair, my team used various objects to facilitate creative thinking. I suggested that we try the same method to see if it worked for this instance. An example of the baby high chair project is follows: Example from the Playchair [24](Carpenter et al, 2006) ”The mothers were then directed to a new area, where a table had been set up with random objects such as a ﬁshing rod, computer mouse, tennis ball, cutting mat, spatula, and many more items. At this point, mothers were asked to generate ideas on things that could improve their lives while cooking and serving and eating dinner. Although the mothers were unsure about how to proceed at ﬁrst, one mother took the initiative, and suggested that a computer mouse be in the kitchen, as a remote to access the electronics throughout the home; in this way, when she pressed on the mouse’s buttons, the computers, televisions, or video games would turn oﬀ, and indicate to the family that dinner was served and to come to the kitchen table.” Chapter 3. Method and Process 44 The concept of UI building blocks could also be considered Low Fidelity Prototyping. [12] In this way, the UI building blocks would be roughly placed together, less like a distinct model representing a real object, and instead to create metaphor, to create a visual understanding by everyone present. It is important for the TAT team to collaborate with the customer, and not only to answer their request with a design. Prototyping with Junk was used to facilitate both parties coming to a better understanding of each other, a more concise interpretation. [11] This allowed for increased communication through visual understanding. Further, by giving the customer and the TAT team the opportunity to tangibly play, and to converse through the use of materials, they can understand each other more clearly than verbal explanation alone. [11] The workshop had a table set up with objects on the table. (Figure 3.5) These objects were chosen by me, and all came from the TAT oﬃces. I thought it best if the objects were fully accessible to TAT once the workshop was completed so they could try this activity on their own. Objects included: Metallic card holder; Action Figure; Bottle caps; Button-pins (decorative); Mini bunny ﬁgurine; Coﬀee stir stick; Post it notes (yellow, pink); Hard drive components (needle, disc, spindle, read/write head); Crayons in a box; Photo IDs from various people (cards); 3 Christmas Ornament balls (Gold, Shiny Silver, Matte Silver); Measuring ruler; Masking tape; Large packing tape dispenser; Screw driver; Post it dispenser; Wii Remote; Matches; Light bulb; Computer mouse; Phone charging station; Bunny book end; and a mobile phone. Participants were instructed to use the objects as they saw necessary to facilitate their dialogue about the customer’s request. The ”customer” in this case, give a very vague request which was then interpreted by the team with all members using the objects available. 3.4 Discussion of Methods and Data Collection The design of all workshops was intended to learn about the demo process; to gain insight into what inherent problems might exist and to generate solutions to solve those. Workshops 1 through 3 examined the demo process from a number of perspectives. Staﬀ throughout the TAT hierarchy were able to give their input on the existing demo process and could contribute what their ideas for improvement were. Workshops 4 and 5 were the response to the ﬁrst three workshops. They oﬀered participants a creative outlet to share ideas, brainstorm solutions and test out the two tools (cultural probe and UI building blocks). Chapter 3. Method and Process 45 Figure 3.6: Test workshop: playing with UI building blocks. In all workshops, prototyping was a key element. Prototyping helped participants to express themselves; by focusing on prototyping as a tool in Workshop 5, participants could utilize their existing knowledge in a new way and apply it to the interpretation of the customer’s request. Further, the use of low-ﬁ prototyping throughout the workshops allowed for quick and easy deployment of tools and brainstorming since elaborate set ups or teaching wasn’t required, participants were able to engage in activities easily. The use of ethnographical practices such as audio and video recording and photography was especially important throughout the workshops. It generated a database from which to reference between one workshop and another and created a review centre; allowing for easy review of the workshop activities and results. While planning ethnographical practices, consideration of how participants would feel about video and audio recording was key; as was how useful each type of recording would be. In some cases, video or audio recording was not necessary but photographs were always taken to document the scene and gain a sense of atmosphere about the workshop. Further, by using ethnographical practices and doing so in a professional manner such as always asking if recording was permissible; participants could take the workshops more seriously, rather than just a meeting between colleagues, also treating it as a learning environment and having the respect necessary for learning and collaborating. Chapter 3. Method and Process 46 In saying this, staging was important for the workshops; it was important to both grasp that the workshops were for a serious cause, but also that they were a comfortable environment where dialogue was both welcomed and encouraged; this was ensured by having small workshops in which participants felt comfortable speaking to one another. The hierarchy setting of each workshop, wherein all workshops had participants who worked on similar levels to one another, allowed participants to speak freely amongst themselves, without worry of saying the wrong thing in front of a participant of higher or lower status within the company. Participants ended up being organized by hierarchy. This wasn’t planned for, as previously discussed, but after observing the success of Workshop 1, where participants spoke freely amongst each other, and related to each other in terms of their status hierarchy wise, it was interesting to set the next two workshops based on hierarchy also. I saw this as an opportunity for participants to discuss the demo process from the perspective of upper, middle and lower management, a grouping that they rarely experience since they are focused on cross disciplinary collaboration in their own work. Considering this situation from another perspective, by not attending Workshop 1 together, and having consequent workshops grouped by hierarchy, an opportunity to facilitate and observe cross competency interaction was missed. This might have been useful and could have provided a learning opportunity for both myself and the participants. However, I feel the reality of grouping by hierarchy worked out well, especially in the case of Workshop 2 where honest appreciation of the demo process’ successes and failures was openly discussed, creating an attitude for all participants of hope to change the process for the better. Considering the ethnographical observations and the hierarchy present within workshops it was interesting to reﬂect that my own ethnographical observations gave me some information about the demo process, and while doing so, the participants also saw my point of view the demo process. In conducting workshops, it gave the participants a time and place to reﬂect and discuss the demo process, something which from my perspective, they seem too busy to do since they are often so involved within the process. The process of Interaction Design encompasses many ﬁelds. Interaction design does not always result in a product, it can be the creation of a process, the construction of an experience; it can be many things, but what is imperative to interaction design is the process. The process includes behavioral analysis, ethnographical practices, product and participant research, engagement with participant, activities for participants; if an artifact is being designed, perhaps it is market research, testing multiple renditions of that artifact. Interaction design becomes a term for the study of many things, but primarily, the study of interaction whether it be digital, physical, mental, tangible or something else entirely. The methods used in this study focused solely on the process of interaction design; methods used were varied, with a focus on the low-ﬁ, the interaction on a basic Chapter 3. Method and Process 47 level, on a tangible scale. Methods used were dictating the process of interaction design, using common tools such as mind mapping, brain storming, story telling, think-aloud, white board visualization, sketching, role-playing and more. These methods are interaction design, they are the process of it; if at least for this study. There are many more methods possible but interaction design can and should be ﬂexible, adapting to each situation and pulling from a nearly endless treasure chest of methods, the right one to understand how to create interaction. Chapter 4 Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results and Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 4.1 TAT Overview, Revisited TAT is a mid-size company who creates, as one of their products, demos exemplifying their products and services. Typically, a demo showcasing TAT’s products that is meant to be used for Marketing, Sales or Products is produced within approximately four to six months. This process includes one month of demo deﬁnition and prototyping, three months of initial coding and design proposals, and two months of ﬁnalizing, debugging, and polishing. As described in Chapter 1, while in the position of Demo Manager, I had created a system which was based on my observation of the demo process. This system was online, internal to TAT, and was composed of ﬁve segments: Demo Request Form, Demo Information Form, List of Requested Demos, List of Produced (Available) Demos, and Inspirational Area wherein TAT staﬀ uploaded their own prototypes and demo mock ups. Although a considerable amount of time was dedicated to observing the demo process before workshops began, it was not participatory in nature, and future participants were not thinking about how they might change things while they carried out their daily actions. Considering this, workshops were designed to be participatory and collaborative in nature, participants would actively contribute ideas and experiences and from these, results drove the rest of the process. Without their participation and 48 Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 49 collaboration, an online set of ﬁve tools would exist, most likely unused due to lack of adequate knowledge about what participants actually needed and could, and would use. 4.2 Workshops 1, 2, and 3 Overview Workshops 1, 2 and 3 were designed to gain an understanding of how the TAT stakeholders felt about the design process. One goal was to gain a background of how the design process functioned from each group’s point of view. A secondary goal was to determine how the process could be improved through discussion of what participants felt worked or didn’t work in the process and how they would change it to improve it. Throughout the creation of these workshops, Brandt’s experience and suggestions were considered, for example, participants should be ”given time to prepare, take part in, and evaluate the workshops” (Brandt, 2001). [9] Brandt discusses the diﬀerence between abstract discussions of the subject, and personal experience of work practices, and discusses her workshops, which were based on abstract discussions, ”the amount of experience and knowledge we gained can be said to be limited in relation to what we could have achieved by using anthropological methods over longer periods of time.” This was true of Workshops 1 - 3. These workshops were set up as reﬂective in their nature; participants discussed and debated the demo process and composed new ideas based on their past experience. 4.2.1 Workshop 1 Results - Gaining insight into the demo process The ﬁrst workshop was carefully composed, practiced and conducted according to formal Participatory Design guidelines. These were outlined by resources including International HIV/AIDS Alliance, who outline the facilitator’s role, [7] Blomberg et al who warn that the ”focus and goals [should be] actively negotiated and not assumed”; [8] and T¨rpel’s overview of the types of participatory design, which was particularly o helpful because of her focus on Science and Technology Studies, Work Studies and CoRealization wherein she discusses reﬂective practices. [5] Activities such as using cut out representative icons of the demo process to lay out the process on paper were planned and introduced. However, despite all research, and planning, the workshop did not go according to plan, and in fact, became better because of it. As mentioned, only three participants showed up, but this made the workshop much more comfortable, like friends talking, rather than a corporate board meeting; since the meeting was held in a board room, the possibility of it being very formal were quite high. Further, as soon as the Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 50 activity of laying out the demo process in paper began, it abruptly was stopped by participants, since it didn’t make sense to them to apply one process to all types of demos. These small interruptions in the plan made for a very satisfying workshop. This was in part because much of it became spontaneous, which I believe enhanced the experience for everyone present; and because it allowed them to be contribute more than they might have in a highly structured workshop. 4.2.1.1 Procedure of Workshop 1 - Setup, instructions, and activities Participants, including the Vice President of Design, an Innovation Expert, and the Products Manager, were welcomed to Workshop 1, and asked to take a seat at the table. At each place, a piece of A4 paper and cut-out icons representing stages of the demo process had been provided. These stages included Demo Requests, Wireframes, Design, Development, Prototyping and Other. An overview to the workshop was given, where participants were instructed ﬁrst to place the icons in a diagram format on the pieces of A4 paper. (Figure 3.4) Participants then moved to the white board to continue discussing the process as a group and map it out. This process didn’t go much further than the instructions. Participants spent approximately one minute looking through the suggested stages and immediately all three declared that they could not classify these into a linear process, since diﬀerent types of demos exist. They began to deﬁne the types of demos within TAT: Design, Concept, Pitch, Product, Sales, or Marketing. Design and concept demos were deﬁned as a designer’s individual interest that develops into a demo and this would be quite personal, not necessarily following prescribed stages; whereas pitches, product and sales were oriented to customers, and marketing referred to show-oﬀ demos for conferences, exhibits, website, all of which were more process-oriented, following a deﬁned set of stages. It was decided that we should focus on sales/product/marketing demos to create a process around those as they were typically more predictable since each external customer case was diﬀerent. Once this was established, the group moved to the white board to begin visually mapping the demo process as it typically runs for this type of demo. To aid in explaining visual mapping, and to show when actions were needed in the demo process, participants were instructed to use prepared Post-it Notes. These had the titles Presentation, Feedback, Revision, Question, and Bomb. Each of these represented an action or concern at each stage. Presentation, Feedback, and Revision were actions that should happen at certain points within the demo process. Participants could place these where they thought they should occur, for example, after each iteration there should be revisions and in some cases feedback. At other places, Question Post-its could be placed when participants posed a question about a certain area. Finally, Bombs were Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 51 introduced, these would indicate where and how a major setback could occur and were placed at appropriate locations. 4.2.1.2 Proceedings of Workshop 1 - Happenings and insights. Participants placed Post-it Notes on the white board, explaining their reasoning each time. ”I think a little bomb should go here, since you can’t predict paying projects, when they will come or who needs to be on them” was the explanation given by a participant when placing a bomb within the demo process. This participant further explained that this was a problem because if people were taken away from working on a demo to work on a customer project, that the process would be interrupted and that same person might not be put back on the demo. The participants discussed this point extensively and repeatedly throughout the process, determining that if possible, a team should be set in place that could not be interrupted by customer projects. Participants explained and exempliﬁed issues within the existing demo process. Customer projects were a reoccurring problem since staﬀ were moved from the demo process to other projects, causing continuity issues. Participants were eager to share these stories and to explain the demo process and as they did so, they actively participated in reﬂective discussion, outlined the problem, considered possible routes the problem could take, and proposed potential solutions. It was during this process that participants engaged in collaborative practices, exchanging stories, analyzing and sharing ideas for solutions. Participants explained many cases of experience with the demo process through story telling. They would give an example, and the group would be able to discuss it, and they used the white board as a tool. Rodrigues et al explain ”traditional live storytelling is an interactive performance art form, wherein the teller adjusts the vocalization, wording, physical movements, gestures, and pace of the story to better meet the needs of the responsive audience.” [19] Participants were actively exploring story telling in the workshop, using gestures and vocal range to express their stories and other participants would respond to them in the same way. The use of the white board allowed them to further express their stories by mapping out their understanding of the demo process in a visual way so that the others could more easily grasp their story. Participant 1 used story telling to explain their view of how customers explain their desire: ”The person requesting it, might not always know what they mean, in particular the customer saying they want something like a 3d UI and they have to ﬁnd their own view of what a 3d UI is and they want to see something. And then that must be kind of Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 52 Figure 4.1: Participants using white board to map out demo process. challenged, then okay I suppose you mean this, and then kind of a very early suggestion and then, was that what you meant, so that’s either communicated.” In this excerpt, the participant begins by pointing at the white board, to the concept section, where the concept is developed, indicated to the others visually what he will be talking about. He then uses hand gestures to emphasize, and laughs, when he says ”like a 3d UI”, referring to the previous conversation where participants all expressed their frustrations with a customer who had requested, very vaguely, 3d UI for their demo. The participant in this example expresses his frustration with the customer and uses performative means to explain himself; the performative aspects of the design process foreshadowed the tools to be developed, and demonstrated the quality of expression through tangible means. By stating that it must be ”challenged”, the participant acknowledged the need for ongoing dialogue between customer and TAT staﬀ. The ”very early suggestion” points to Cross’ Creative Leap being initiated, exploring potential solutions, and seeking a catalyst to push concepts forward. This process of storytelling, conceptual visualization on the whiteboard, placing Postits, and the closeness of having three people and a facilitator present contributed to a successful workshop. The workshop concluded with participants having expressed all Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 53 their examples of issues within the demo process, outlining a typical demo process, and suggesting areas of improvement within the demo process. These practices manifest as qualities within the TAT atmosphere, by using a creative tool that helps people to bond and better understand one another. 4.2.2 Workshop 2 - Results: Deconstructing the demo process Workshop 2 was held much more informally after the experience with Workshop 1; it was instead held in an oﬃce, using a smaller whiteboard and participants were encouraged to stand rather than sit so that they could easily move forward to contribute by drawing on the white board. It consisted of VP of Marketing, the Chief Technology Oﬃcer, and the Lead Art Director. All three participants are primary stakeholders within TAT and ﬁnal decision making rests with them. This workshop was very honest, all members commented openly that there was a problem with the demo process, ”it’s a mess, that’s the problem” commented one participant, and without hesitation, participants began to devise a new structure for the process, stating throughout the workshop why the current process wasn’t functioning correctly. This proposed structure gave a diﬀerent perspective on the demo process which allowed for comparison between the other two workshops; further, it provided a baseline for Workshop 3 as the proposed process was used as a catalyst for thought and discussion. In this workshop, several important points came up to help determine ”interpretation” as the focus of this study. • Participants explored the past demo, which had just been cancelled after two months of production, ”the feedback process worked but we hadn’t thought the original idea through”. • They described a ”vital problem”: the customer says “We want WOW” but how does TAT ”better extract the core concept?” • They describe the ﬁrst meeting with the customer, and ask ”who should be there for the initial iterations?” They answer, ”people from diﬀerent disciplines”. Further, they state that there should be a rule that the person requesting the demo outlines three times they want to accomplish with the demo and explain, ”its hard for design to interpret the request, so these three things could help.”. They explain the need to ask questions, “by realism do you mean, textures, lighting, etc?” and go on to explain, ”realism could be photos, or physics, iterations are needed to see what they want. There should be fast sketches done.” and state, “its not rocket science, its just asking the right questions at the right time”. Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 54 • They outlined an ideal situation, that there should be ”a purpose: “show new Cascades features” (customer should have done homework, and know what new features are and which ones they want.” • They state, “one hour spent in the initial meeting can save 100 hours in step 5 (implementation)” while describing the proposed demo process. These statements were the foundational points of this workshop. Considering these comments, the theme emerged: the original idea, the ﬁrst meeting, the right questions, a combination of backgrounds, and purpose of demo all need to be determined to have a successful demo process. How the request is interpreted is vital, this can be seen with the suggestion of having ’three things’ or of asking the right questions to understand the request or spending a quality hour in the ﬁrst meeting. ”Thinking the original idea through” is also reﬂective of interpretation. Perhaps the TAT team correctly interpreted the request but then they didn’t reﬂect on it, so it wasn’t well thought through. By not reﬂecting on that interpretation, TAT misses important dialogue that could lead to clariﬁcation and discovery. Within these statements, participants outline key issues such as not clearly identifying the original customer desire; they move on to ask this exact question, ”how does TAT extract the core concept?” this is a repeating point between the ﬁrst two workshops, clarity, conﬁrmation, interpretation and meaning ever being questioned and re-analyzed. The demo process is articulated by these statements, the participants echo many of the intended goals of this thesis study for their own design process. They want ”people from diﬀerent disciplines”; reﬂecting Brandt’s ideals; they focus on asking questions to clarify meaning as does Bj¨rgvinsson within his studies, asking medical staﬀ to clarify o their routines. Further, their ideal situations are where the customer has a ”purpose” as Cross identiﬁes as one of the key elements in good design research. It was within this meeting that the ”Creative Leap” described by Cross began to take place. Participants referred back to the ”initial meeting” again and again, and began to create connections, ”bridges” as Cross explains, ”the ’bridge’ recognizably embodies satisfactory relationships between problem and solution.” (Cross, 2007). [10] The bridge that began to develop in this workshop was that of the importance of the ﬁrst meeting, of the ﬁrst request, of the right questions, all leading to the problem: interpretation simply wasn’t adequate. The participants then began bridging to solution, describing a proposed process for the ﬁrst customer meeting, ”design makes three sketches. Could these be just Google images? Really quick? Sketches? Moving sketches? Textures? As little as possible but enough. It’s how we interpret it that decides the concept, and one needs to be decided on.” Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 55 Figure 4.2: White board used to explain problems in demo process and to propose improvements. Participants outlined how they needed to focus on a variety of prototyping methods to begin approaching the solution. By having a repertoire of methods they are able to, on the spot, choose the appropriate way to prototype, given a particular situation. This is important since each situation and each set of people in a given situation might be diﬀerent and might have varying needs or attitudes. Adaptability is key when conducting workshops. While Workshop 1 laid out the demo process, described the stages, and involvement of people and began to explore problems and potential solutions, Workshop 2 ruthlessly tore into the problems, honestly and concisely stating them and proposing a process that might work more eﬃciently. The process however, is not the point of this study, the moment of interpretation is, and so Workshop 3 was devised to discuss with those who would be interpreting, their views of the demo process. Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 56 4.2.3 Workshop 3 - Results: Considering the Demo Process from an Interaction Design and Art Direction This workshop focused on the demo request stage and how it could be more productive. As in Workshop 2, Workshop 3 was held in the same oﬃce. The Lead Interaction Designer and the Design Art Director were present. These participants are not stakeholders at TAT and as such, had a very diﬀerent attitude than those of in Workshop 2. They were more hesitant to bring forward problems or frustrations but did oﬀer their input from their position perspectives. Given the hesitation of participants, this workshop required an approach that was more interview based. Participants were asked questions, and gave feedback, but were more reluctant to write on the white board. This was perceived as being a result of their place in TAT, hierarchy wise; perhaps they were not comfortable with commenting on their manager’s actions or perhaps they were just reluctant in general. Either way, a focus on prototyping methods rather than critical analysis of the demo process occurred. First, the demo process was examined, then quickly moving on to prototyping methods. The participants began by outlining their perceived problems with the demo request stage, namely, that it ”should have one explicit owner, not three or four” and that requests should be more speciﬁc, ”its nice to have free mindset but if its something important it’s good that we can’t imagine what they want, we should have a more speciﬁc request.” Participants outlined that they thought people from diﬀerent backgrounds should be at the initial meeting, ”the requester should be there, a business intelligence person should be there, and a developer should be there”. Later in the meeting, they also added that an Interaction Designer ”could be present with requester to set up boundaries from the beginning, and focus on the right stuﬀ.” The Interaction Designer and Design Art Director brieﬂy discussed their roles and how they ﬁt into the current demo process and examined ways in which they could ﬁt into the process proposed in Workshop 2. They commented on the need for feedback, and suggested several prototyping methods to help improve feedback including: wireframes, rough videos, combination of sketch and video, mood boards, eﬀects, use cases and wireframe scenarios. Their recognition of the value of prototyping in the TAT design process correlated to the focus on prototyping within this study. Prototyping as a method of communication, in this case, showing demo progress, was again highlighted as a key element in moving the process forward. Context speciﬁc user testing was introduced to participants, the practice of taking a concept and testing it brieﬂy and roughly before implementing it. Bj¨rgvinsson and o Hillgren deﬁne it as ”The occasioned practice, created by the on-the-spot experiments, Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 57 drawing upon the practitioners’ experiences, the physical environment and its artifacts, in combination with the learning-aid, helped to mediate what it can mean to use content and technology.” [25] Participants were asked if they thought it could be beneﬁcial to run a prototype outside and test it with people on the street to get a reaction; meeting Bj¨rgvinsson and Hillgren’s description of testing within the physical environment of use o (streets), the artifact (mobile application/UI) and the experience of the practitioner, in this case, the people on the street, testing it. ”If its a new concept it could be good or totally unfamiliar, what if they don’t like it because they don’t know (understand) it, it would only work if they were open minded.” was the reaction from one participant. They also noted that it would be ”good to get a second opinion” and that a ”usability perspective is useful but one would need to ﬁnd the right target person on the street which could take some time, and then their point of reference is their own phone, they may not be able to imagine the type of system we’re trying to design”. The recognition of prototyping methods being timing dependent was also transferable between TAT’s demo process and the design process of this study. Having a keen awareness of appropriate timing when using particular prototypes, considering their beneﬁts and disadvantages was crucial for both processes to progress smoothly. Workshop 3 mainly examined the roles of participants and how they ﬁt into the demo process. This was important to understand since as Blomberg et al (Blomberg, 1990) pointed out while reﬂecting on participatory design, ”establishing mutual respect for, and some understanding of, one another’s competencies is understood as crucial to the work of designing new technology, both to support real communication and also to provide rich perspectives on all aspects of the design.” Although some commentary was given on the current and proposed demo structure, participants spent most of the time discussing prototyping methods to generate better concepts, a major theme when developing tools for iteration. These suggestions of wireframes, rough videos, combination of sketch and video, mood boards, eﬀects, use cases and wireframe scenarios were taken into consideration when developing the interpretation tool set for Workshop 4. 4.3 Workshops 1 - 3: Summary and considerations Workshops 1 - 3 provided a very speciﬁc summary of how the current demo process operates, as well as providing a clear view into the problems, frustrations and also positive aspects of how it functions. Participants were forthcoming with their comments and Workshop 1 was completely necessary to set a base line of what constituted a ’demo process’ and which type of demo would be studied. The honesty of Workshop 2 was stimulating, providing a clear insight into the distinctive problems that exist and Chapter 4. Collaborative Explanation of the Current Demo Process: Results Analysis Workshops 1, 2, and 3 58 building on Workshop 1’s proposed solutions, oﬀering a concise process plan that could help to improve functionality. Workshops 1 and 2 were fundamental in establishing the main issue, the Demo Request Stage and stating repeatedly that the moment of conception for a demo, when it moved from request to concept, was essential to be clear, well thought out, and ﬁrmly decided. Workshop 3 further emphasized this point by providing insight into tools that could be used to establish a concept, and identiﬁed the roles of Interaction Design and Art Director within that process; these two would work as a team to try and correctly interpret a request. Although the topic of this study wasn’t immediately clear after these workshops, many themes had been identiﬁed and a breakdown of themes and commentary was necessary to determine the main issues. Six recurring issues were identiﬁed throughout the exploration of the demo process: • Demo request stage: when the customer ﬁrst makes a request, and how this is deﬁned into a concept • Customer projects: the problem of staﬀ being moved to paying customer projects, interrupting ongoing demo processes and disrupting continuity. • Constructive feedback: how to create a more thorough feedback system wherein designers and engineers would get better direction on their initiatives. • ”Too many cooks”: the old adage of ”too many cooks in the kitchen” wherein there were too many decision makers involved within the process. • Process development: how could the process look or be communicated without destroying creativity? • The paying customer eﬀect: paying customer projects had strict deadlines, rules, and procedures in place, but the internal demo processes did not. These provided an important insight into the intricacies of the demo process and each was considered carefully and discussed with stakeholders. However, the clear conclusion was that the demo request stage was the most discussed and most signiﬁcant part of the process. If the demo was not correctly deﬁned and conceptualized, the rest of the process would be compromised and the other ﬁve problems would be consequently more prevalent throughout the remainder of the process. Chapter 5 Results and Analysis Workshop 4 5.1 Mapping the Demo Request Stage To properly understand the various components of the Demo Request Stage, I created a mind-map (Figure 5.1 - Mind Map). Participants had repeatedly issues in the demo request stage in the form of four themes: customer, concept, decision, and clarity. Figure 5.1: Mind Map of four themes: Customer, Concept, Decision, Clarity. This map shows the Demo Request Stage as the main component and explores areas including the customer, the concept, the decision, and the need to clarify. The customer could be internal or external, but for the purposes of this thesis, the internal customer was being considered. The concept section had many questions about its deﬁnition and 59 Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 60 the decision segment showed an obvious need to commit to one decision. The most interesting section was that of the need to clarify. How is shared understanding (clarity) achieved? How could one deﬁne an idea, how can it be speciﬁc, and what questions should be asked? From this it was easy to expand to exploring tools to help explore understanding, and how it could be achieved. For each section, a sample of participant’s statements are below: • Customer: ”Proposed process: Customer meets appointed Art Director and Engineering Director. Customer describes desires.” • Concept: ”Think original idea through” and ”How do we better extract the core concept?” • Decision: ”First document in ﬁrst meeting should be signed.” • Clarity: ”Its how we interpret it that determines the concept”. These exemplify how important the demo request stage is to participants and what bearing these four aspects have. These aspects essentially determine the progression of the demo process. If considered correctly and thoroughly, the process is successful and relatively easy going. If there is miscommunication, changing ideas or a lack of adequate deﬁnition, the rest of the demo process can be very diﬃcult and in some cases, cancelled and restarted. Given these types of statements as a perspective from the participants regarding the demo request stage, it was important to ﬁnd somewhere to focus. The main focus was how to progress from keyword to concept. How did the mind map all come together? The customer states a keyword, the art director and interaction designer try to clarify that through interpretative measures and come to a concept. The concept is decided upon, and the process moves forward. However, this process is not so linear, and not so simple. The key moment is the interpretation. If that is achieved successfully, a concept can be declared and a decision made. This is illustrated in Figure 5.2 (Flow chart) where the main component is the red area; art director and interaction designer may go through several iterations to achieve a common understanding, a clarity in their interpretation of the customer’s desire. This was discussed with the Vice President of Marketing for TAT who handles demos; he stated that this was deﬁnitely an area of interest ”since that part of the process is essential for not losing in (Time to Market) and heat losses in the process.” A workshop to explore this interpretative stage was arranged with ﬁve participants: the Vice President of Marketing (Participant A), the Vice President of Design (Participant B), the Lead Art Director (Participant C), the Chief Technology Oﬃcer (Participant D), and the Lead Interaction Designer (Participant E). Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 61 Figure 5.2: Flow Chart of proposed demo process: focus on interpretation. Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 62 5.2 Workshop 4 - Results of brainstorming tools for interpretation The aim of Workshop 4 was to determine appropriate tools for interpretation through brainstorming and discussion. Workshop 4 began with an explanation of the previous workshops, and workshop results were brieﬂy summarized. Participants were introduced to the focus of the thesis, and shown via diagrams, and verbal explanation, why I believed the focus should be on the iterative interpretation part of the Demo Request Stage. Following the explanation, a series of seven brainstorming ideas were presented, to begin the brainstorming process. Participants were then encouraged to discuss the thesis topic of interpretation, with instructions that brainstorming would follow shortly afterwards. Participants initially spent a lot of time discussing the diagram (Figure 5.2 Flow Chart), the structure of the initial meeting, focusing on that there should ideally be an engineer involved within this initial process as well as the Interaction Designer and Art Director already appointed. This discussion went on for several minutes, with each person explaining how they thought an engineer’s presence could be useful at this stage, and heavily emphasizing the need for one. Since the participants were focused so much on the diagram structure rather than the iterative interpretation process, one of the participants voluntarily re-focused the group. The group moved onwards in the discussion, with the understanding that all future discussion regarding this ﬁrst meeting now included the engineer. Once this point was made, participants were able to focus on brainstorming strategies for interpretation. This discussion demonstrated that participants are actively seeking improvements to their process. The collaborative nature of the workshop allowed participants to bounce ideas oﬀ each other, they instinctively desired a cross disciplinary team, (including engineer) recognizing the same need for variety of knowledge that Brandt often sought out in her work, and that Bj¨rgvinsson emphasized with his instructional videos made from o medical staﬀ of varied backgrounds. This exempliﬁes how the tools and language used in an organization must encompass all disciplines; there should be a shared language within cross discipline collaboration. Before beginning brainstorming methods of interpretation, the concept of interpretation was discussed; outlining the value of this step, and the impact it had on the rest of the demo process. For example a participant conﬁrmed that the Demo Request Stage is ”...the stage where we build the common ground for what’s going to be produced.” Another participant commented that customers were indeed vague about their requests, ”...in some cases, they’re very speciﬁc, but in most cases they’re quite vague, essentially Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 63 leave it to us to come up with ideas and get back to them and they can sort of pick and choose from those ideas.” Furthermore, it was stated that the customers ”don’t really know what’s cool, they essentially just want something to show which creates an eﬀect with the audience where we are perceived as really the innovation company, TAT comes with WOW or new things”. Participants acknowledged the need to focus on the customer request since ”customers don’t really know” it becomes even more important to understand how the customer feels, to examine what they think and to try to determine their meaning so TAT’s ”WOW”, when presented, is both eﬀective and accurate. Seven potential methods were then explored to see how the TAT team (Art Director, Interaction Designer and Engineer) could interpret the customer’s desire. These included sketching, image search, on the ﬂy mood boards, context speciﬁc testing, UI building blocks, past examples and the hairstyle metaphor. (Each of these methods along with participant responses are explained in sections 5.2.1 to 5.2.8). Once these methods were introduced, participants were instructed to take a pen and a Post-it Note and write down any comments they had regarding each idea on paper that had been placed on the walls with the subject of each method written on it. Accompanying these were three papers that had question marks written on them where participants were invited to discuss their own ideas for potential methods. The Post-it Notes provided for participants were in the shape of arrows, and participants quickly determined that placing arrows, either up (good), down (bad) or sideways (okay) would be useful indicators of popularity for each method. Participants were given ten minutes to write and post their comments and then a roundtable discussion, regarding each method consecutively, was held. Each method is discussed below in the order they were discussed in the workshop. (sketching, image search, on the ﬂy mood boards, context speciﬁc testing, UI building blocks, past examples, hairstyle metaphor and other.) 5.2.1 Mood Boards: Mood boards could be constructed, much like the image search to deﬁne a mood or genre for the desire of the customer. These could be constructed on the spot, using materials brought in by TAT, from a catalogue of images, colors or shapes or searched on the internet and used digitally. Participants discussed mood boards in both positive and negative terms, and often referencing image searching within the same discussion. The following comments were made: Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 64 Participant A: ”...they tend to often get too detailed that you actually you tend to craft a very lengthy story on how everything should go instead of actually focusing on the, the vision and the idea that you want to communicate so I think that for these early meetings, I think mood boards tend to be maybe too detailed, that’s at least my impression from past examples.” Participant B: ”I ﬁnd mood boards a good example, you can actually [ ] mood boards a little bit wider in context besides just ﬁnding the right style. You can use mood boards in corporation with Google image search as a past example just to ﬁnd a collective understanding... You can merge some from Google images and some past examples from both your own work but also from work of other companies.” Participant C: ”We had a meeting earlier with (phone company) and they have made a mood board for their luxury phone and I think it said a lot of things about what they’re expecting from us.” Participant C: ”I really like Google images but could be that if you put really nice slick images on completely new items you could get in love with that picture.” Participants felt that mood boards should be emotional, and not greatly detailed, that they should ﬁnd a common ground of understanding between the customer and the TAT team. Participant A was worried that mood boards could be too detailed, but Participants B and C felt that through merging various images, colors, shapes or past examples, a mood board could be eﬀective. Participant B further explained that ”normally the graphical look and feel comes later at the later stage, I think the ﬁrst goal is to set the concept and the overall feeling of what you want the demo to express before you set the graphical look and feel so it, so at this stage it might be a better idea to have an image for it that expresses, that benchmarks again the solutions that cover what you want or partly covers what you want to express.” Throughout this discussion it could be seen that the participants had diﬀerent experience with mood boards. Participant A was not overly optimistic about mood boards based on previous experience with them, however Participants B and C were both enthusiastic about mood boards. Interestingly, Participant A (Vice President of Marketing) usually acts as the customer for internal demo requests and Participants B and C (Art Director and Vice President of Design) are usually the ones utilizing mood boards as a tool. This suggests that the customer may not have the patience for mood boards as a tool, or further, may not understand the beneﬁt of using them, though Art Director and Designer encourage these as a tool. Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 65 5.2.2 UI building blocks: The building blocks could be physical representations of elements of a UI present in the room. These elements could be picked up and placed together (a scroll bar, a photo, a text ﬁeld) and used to represent how the UI or application might function or look. When discussed, UI building blocks transformed from a concept of using tangible place holders, such as a square piece of paper representing a photograph, to the concept of having many random items strewn across the table that people could pick up and use as metaphor, showing movement, shape, connectivity and more. This correlates well to Frishberg, who suggested that ”Prototyping with Junk” would facilitate creative discussion. [11] The following discussion occurred: Participant B: ”That would be very creative to have all these building blocks and start to build but I’m not sure, not everybody would feel comfortable [ ] being that expressive in a big meeting.” Participant C: ”Yeah, but then that might limit the creativity” Participant B: ”And some designers might not be practical at all, doing things like that. They are good at designing on the computer, so they might not be sculptures or artists.” Participant C: ”Yeah I think we can use that, actually but more with whatever we’ve got on, on the table.” Vanessa: ”So would it be good to have like sort of a tool kit on the table of random objects? I’ve done that before for workshops where I’ve just brought in thirty completely random objects and laid them out on the table and people put them together in interesting ways to say well what if it did like, do you think it would be good for, [etc]” Participant C: ”It might be better, it might not be. Instead of because if this looks exactly like a scroll bar then I can’t use it for a highlighter or header or something.” Participant D: ”It feels like the more exact replicas of a scroll bar and that, and the I don’t know, a button or whatever, that’s, it feels like that, its somewhere later in the process when you really know exactly these will be, essentially maybe if you even ﬁnd from a technical standpoint that we can only use these due to some technical constraint then it would make sense to have those.” Participant E: ”When we did the, the concept, what’s it called, PlanetUI, I think (inaudible) we used a mobile camera and boxes that we could that we put on a table, moving between these in a speciﬁc pattern with the camera then you get a feel for how should the movement be, in another example we had an orange to provide the feeling of having (inaudible) and moving forward on that one as well. And I think that was Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 66 quite easy to understand just using those kind of objects to have, give a feel of how the navigation would be and the feeling of it.” The UI building blocks evolved from a concept of having physical and visual representations of objects into having random objects be assigned representation to boost creativity and to give the TAT team the freedom to interpret without restrictions. Examples were made of previous uses of ’building blocks’ and random objects, and a speciﬁc example was made by Participant E who demonstrated that they had done this using everyday objects to show camera movement in a UI system. This expemliﬁes prototyping in action, Tom Kelley of IDEO [? ] depicted situations wherein objects at hand were used to prototype, and Participant E demonstrates the same in this example. Participant D made the comment that speciﬁc, set representations might be useful later in the process to determine technical needs. This discussion helped to identify UI building blocks as a possible tool for interpretation. Further, it emphasized TAT’s familiarity with the design process as an ongoing dialogue to determine shared meaning. 5.2.3 Context speciﬁc testing: The concept of context speciﬁc testing entails the quick testing of a preliminary concept. During the initial meeting, a coﬀee break would be had by participants of the meeting, during which, a sketch developed in the ﬁrst half of the meeting would be taken outside the building into the streets, to be tested by non-designers, asking them if they would use the object or application or if it appealed to them. This would give a very brief introduction to how the concept might be received and might give a fresh prospect on the concept. A short discussion was held regarding context speciﬁc testing. Participants felt that they couldn’t use it as early as the Demo Request Stage since a concept was needed ﬁrst to use this tool. Participant E stated ”I think its really, really good to do that but as said, at a later stage, because you really have to have some kind of idea, what should the concept, this concept, what should it do?”. The other participants agreed and the point was not discussed further. 5.2.4 Past examples: Through using past examples as reference points, customers could show which features they did and did not like, and how these could be incorporated into the developed concept, or could help to interpret the desire stated. Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 67 It was suggested that past examples could also include other company’s works as well as TAT’s. Participant A warned that if ”you’re actually looking for something creative and new” and you ”can get focused on things that have already been done” using past examples that ”you might lock yourself into something false”. Participant D agreed, stating, ”in some cases its more an example of what not to do”. Past examples could be useful to demonstrate qualities the client might not be looking for, for example, if the customer wanted to see ”3d, but not like it was done on...” that might be useful for the TAT team. By examining examples of previously made demos, customers could point out what they do or don’t like. The danger in this is their creativity might be limited, they potentially see only a list of things they can choose to have or not have rather than thinking of new things. This applies equally to designers. It seemed more important to focus on constructive solutions than to review old solutions. 5.2.5 Hairstyle metaphor: When a woman goes to get a hair cut she usually browses ﬁrst through magazines, and clips out styles she likes to bring into the hair stylist’s as an example of what she’s looking for. A dialogue ensues, discussing this choice considering her hair type, color, length, and other parameters; a common ground is established, and the hair cut starts. This entire process takes less than ten minutes, the hair stylist being an expert at hair cutting, styles and possibilities and the customer being an expert in what they want, and how their hair behaves. Can this occur in a concept meeting if a customer were to do their homework ﬁrst before visiting TAT? (In the case of internal requests, being as speciﬁc as possible with reference to examples and having respect for the expertise of both parties). The Hairstyle metaphor is diﬀerent than past examples, instead of referencing speciﬁc demos, customers reference speciﬁc desires, thus focusing on goals and possibilities. Participants understood this tool suggestion to mean that the customer should do some homework before coming to the meeting and stated that ”the customer doesn’t want or have time to do that,”. Participant B also brought up the excellent point that the customer ”might not have knowledge to do it, they might have not have a UI or graphical knowledge, they might have an understanding of what they want but they can’t ﬁnd it anywhere.” Participant C added that it might be possible to do this ”if you can prove to them that this will save you two weeks of time”. The concept of a ’kit’ was discussed, something that the customer could complete before coming to the meeting, that would be a short time investment, answering a few questions, that might save a tremendous amount of guesswork and discussion once in the meeting with the TAT Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 68 team. Participants thought this could be very beneﬁcial, and were willing to do another workshop to role-play the use of such a kit. 5.2.6 Image search: An example of using Google Image Search was used here with the search terms ”realism 3d UI”. This generated a diverse group of images which somehow related to the search terms and could serve to spark imagination, recognition, or clarity in the mind of the customer or interpreters. Participants were positive about using an image search to help interpret customer’s keywords. Participant A gave the example of how in an image search for a keyword such as shiny, ”you can search for diﬀerent versions of the shaders and how it reﬂects in diﬀerent, like do you want super shininess or do you want more like dark, and oh its more this direction, then you understand directly how you want to go about it.”. Participants also thought that Youtube, or a video search could be beneﬁcial, ”add YouTube on that or maybe moving images, because I think that’s very important.” (stated Participant A). Since the image search discussion had taken place for the most part in relation to mood boards, participants agreed at this point that it was an excellent tool, and pointed out that any image search could be done such as within a stock photo website like iStockPhoto or on a photo sharing network such as Flickr. 5.2.7 Sketching: Sketching is a method used extensively at TAT, it can be very low-ﬁ, on the spot mock up, or a detailed visual representation. In this context, the very low-ﬁ sketching was discussed as a method to understand the desire stated by the customer. An example of a sketch by a TAT designer can be seen in Figure 5.3. Participants used a past example to explore the idea of using sketching. Participant E explained how he and a colleague had drawn up ﬁfteen quick sketches to be presented for concept consideration and that these hadn’t taken long but, a concept already developed into a moving image of a sketch was too detailed and therefore diﬃcult to comment on. Participant A felt that sketching could become too detailed, ”sometimes people make, put a lot of eﬀort into sketching and its very detailed but then you kind of end up in details” but Participant D suggested, ”when you do those types of activities, have pretty tough time limits or something so its not like you’re not allowed to spend days and days in sketching”. The participants then discussed how if sketching was too detailed, it could lead to a ’yes’ or ’no’ answer rather than a consideration of the concept, Participant A Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 69 Figure 5.3: An early sketch for a demo concept. gave an example of this, ”oh that’s, that’s good but I’m not sure that’s really what I ordered, I just thought it looked good.” Participant D argued that sketching was ”good as a starting point for discussion” and all agreed that sketches had to remain less detailed, rather than going into usability, they should instead focusing on visualizing the keywords given by the customer to form an understanding. 5.2.8 Other tools: Participants mentioned two other potentially useful tools. The ﬁrst, already discussed, was the use of a video search to aid the customer in deﬁning what they might want or not want. The second was the use of a creativity room. This room was described as a room where magazines, books, sculptures, or other sources of inspiration might reside. Participant C explained that ”you sit by a computer all day, [its] good to have a change of environment,”, Participant B agreed, ”having peace and quiet and sculptures and magazines and just look through inspiration instead of always sitting in front of your computer and just get some image search back.”. It was discussed that apparently, TAT had such a room designed for their building, but due to budgetary constraints, had to use the space for other means, though all agreed it would be a useful space to have. Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 70 Figure 5.4: Brainstorming tools for interpretation. 5.3 Workshop 4 Summary of activities Participants were thoughtful about their responses and while a few tools received the most attention, all were considered, and several new tools were suggested. Throughout the workshop, the image and video search were repeatedly brought up in examples of use and participants spent a considerable amount of time discussing mood boards. Participants discussed sketching in relation to past use but didn’t seem very excited about using this as a primary tool for interpretation. However, participants did comment that trying ”some of the new ones,” UI building blocks, and the customer kit would be of interest. Since no actual demo requests were upcoming in the near future, it was decided that a role-playing session would help to determine the usefulness of the UI building blocks and the customer kit. This shaped Workshop 5, which would focus on the use of these two tools in a test-setting. 5.4 Workshop 4 Discussion Workshop 4 was useful in determining the values and needs of the participants. Doing a brainstorming session helped to expose new ideas and opened discussion on the seven presented ideas. Participants seemed eager to try something new. They were familiar Chapter 5. Results and Analysis Workshop 4 71 with many of the presented concepts such as sketching, moodboards or the use of past examples. They seemed to be hopeful for anything that could serve as a tool to help improve the demo process and were engaged fully in discussions regarding potential methods. The focus on the need for an engineer in the initial part of the meeting indicated the continued presence of other problems in the demo process that need to be addressed by TAT in the future. Although this study began as an exploration of the entire demo process, the focus is on the point of interpretation. While my hope is that improving interpretation will help the rest of the process, it cannot solve the entire process. The demo process must be ongoing in its improvement, and will have to be evaluated and updated continuously to function well. Participants seemed positive and helpful and were looking for creative surprises and the Creative Leap, they were goal oriented, and seemed to want to ﬁnd ’the answer’ but were still appreciative of the process of brainstorming and discussion. Participant’s thoughtful consideration of each method demonstrated their awareness of a need for change within the demo process. By discussing each method, they indicated a willingness to change and a recognition of the potentials for new ways of operating within the demo process. During the move to Workshop 5 with the two prevalent methods, the culture probe and UI building blocks, I felt conﬁdent that these tools were the right choices; participants were seeking something new, and were interested in discovering surprises, both of which these tools could potentially oﬀer. Chapter 6 Results and Analysis Workshop 5 6.1 Setting the stage and preparing the actors Workshop 5 featured staﬀ members from TAT acting in their roles as Designer, Art Director and Interaction Designer and one individual role-played the role of the customer to test the cultural probe and the UI building blocks and to discuss results. Before Workshop 5 began, a cultural probe was constructed and the meeting room was prepared for the meeting. The cultural probe was prepared before the workshop was given to the ”customer” approximately 30 minutes before the workshop. The goal of this was to promote creative thinking within the customer so they could be thinking creatively and with a mind open to possibilities before going to the meeting. It was decided to give this person the cultural probe only 30 minutes before the meeting to gauge how eﬀective it would be to have it a short time before the meeting so the feeling of creativity was still with them when they came to Workshop 5. Figure 6.1: A kit for customers to boost their creative thinking. 72 Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 73 The person role-playing the customer enjoyed doing the cultural probe. He said, ”it’s fun, it makes you feel good about yourself”. He answered all seven cultural probe questions but the answers were not revealed until we were all in Workshop 5 together. I sat with him as he completed the cultural probe, giving him enough distance to make him feel comfortable opening it and going through it on his own. During the time he answered the probe questions, he seemed happy with the contents. With each object he pulled out of the box, he examined it, read the question, smiled often, and wrote down an answer on a separate piece of paper. (We had decided to write answers on a separate piece of paper rather than on the provided answer area so that we could share the probe with the other participants during the workshop). He felt that completing the probe was a good experience and we didn’t discuss it further until the workshop began. (See Figure 6.1) To prepare for the workshop, a number of items were gathered from around the TAT oﬃce building. (See Appendix A - Workshop 5 UI building blocks objects). This was deliberate so TAT could recreate the workshop in the future without any special requirements. Items came from the supply room, from decorative items on people’s desks and from common areas. These items were spread out on the meeting room table. (Figure 6.2) Figure 6.2: Using the UI building blocks. Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 74 6.2 Workshop 5 - Results Workshop 5 participants included the Design Art Director, a Concept Designer, the Head of Interaction Design, and a TAT Graphic Designer. The focus of the workshop was to prototype the use of the cultural probe and discuss it amongst those present, and to hold a mock-demo request meeting; participants would role-play themselves in the situation of a customer request meeting, and the Innovation Expert would role-play the customer. The customer was to make a vague request about something he’d like to have made by TAT and the TAT team would respond using the UI building blocks. The aim of the workshop was to understand if the cultural probe would help the customer to deﬁne their request, and to see if the UI building blocks would help participants to interpret the customer correctly. 6.2.1 Cultural Probe Introduction and Discussion At the start of Workshop 5, participants were introduced to the cultural probe and discussed their impressions of it. I explained that the probe was to be used to help the customers to think creatively before the meeting, to give them an introduction to TAT via the box the cultural probe came in and to give them a sense of the playfulness and creativity that are a major part of TAT’s values. Further, the probe could be used as a guage of how playful the customer was, if their attitude was more corporate minded or more creative minded. Participants thought that this was a good ”warm up” exercise for the customer, that it would make a good impression on them since typically, the ﬁrst impression of a company is by impressions of what company staﬀ is wearing or how the board room is decorated. By providing the probe, customers gain initial insight, a ﬁrst impression of TAT, and also begin to think on a creative level. Participants were concerned that the questions might cause the customer to over think their answers, however, after some discussion it was decided that of the questions provided, only the ”choose a chair” or ”choose a car” examples were of this nature, causing the customer to carefully choose their answer, while the rest were playful enough to warrant a quick honest answer. Participants felt the cultural probe would be a good tool to use before meetings and looked forward to furthering the design of the probe. The probe would ideally help the demo request become more clear, it might be easier to reach shared understanding if TAT had a grasp of the customer’s attitude. TAT could base judgements around customer input on their understanding of the customer as per the probe answers. This could be another way to enhance communication. Gaver et al describe how the probes create a dialogue between the volunteers and designers, that the volunteers present them with a reality that must be interpreted by the Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 75 designers and thus provide them with “new perspectives that can constrain and open design ideas.“ This is the moment that I hope to achieve using cultural probes with the customer and the designers, the TAT team. By providing the TAT team with a glimpse into the customer’s sense of reality, it will give the team a chance to develop their own perceptions without being overwhelmed by the customer’s request. Gaver et al conclude, “probology” is an approach that uses Probes to encourage subjective engagement, empathetic interpretation, and a pervasive sense of uncertainty as positive values for design.” Probology will be the tool that allows for more than empathetic interpretation, but hopefully will lead to enhanced interpretation, taking a customer’s request from vague wording to clear concept. The participant role playing the customer explained his answers to the cultural probe, going through each object. He explained that this was from his perspective, rather than from the customer character perspective. • Clear Plastic Box : with tag, ”Place in this box something you value but can part with easily”. The participant explained that he would put an idea of his in this box, since it was of great value to him but he could easily part with it. • Battery : with tag, ”If you could give yourself a boost of energy during the day when would it be?” He explained that he would like an energy boost as he was leaving work so he could have energy to spend quality time with his family. • LED Light : with tag, ”What’s been your brightest idea today?” He explained that he had a bright idea when talking to clients earlier in the day. • Paper with four printed fonts : ”Favorite Font?” He chose one of the fonts but wasn’t particularly impressed with any of them. • Spoon : with tag, ”Spoon it up. What would you like to be eating right now?” He said he wants to be eating Vietnamese soup but he didn’t have time for it on this day. • 3 Photos : with tag, ”Choose a car: Volvo, Mustang, DB7” He chose a Volvo, but didn’t explain why, he did explain that he doesn’t like choosing cars or being evaluated by type of car, and doesn’t like cars in general. • 3 Photos : with tag, ”Choose a chair: white, orange, brown” He chose the orange modern chair and explained that he was interested since he was wondering how one would sit in it. These answers show values and qualities prominent in the design process, the value of an idea, the joy of having a ”bright idea”, the aesthetic awareness when considering Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 76 fonts, the awareness of time and deadlines, and value choices such as not wanting to be evaluated by car type. Each of these can be considered an important aspect when working in the design process. Innocent as general answers, they gain meaning when they are revealed or the thoughtful responses of an established designer. After this explanation we moved on to the role-playing and the UI building blocks exercise. 6.2.2 Using the UI Building Blocks Participants were instructed to commence a typical customer demo request meeting, acting in each of their roles, as customer, Design Art Director, Head of Interaction Design, and TAT Graphic Designer. The customer began by explaining his desire, he wanted something for his new phone that had a temperature sensor in it: did the TAT team have any ideas? Figure 6.3: Participants using UI Building Blocks. The TAT team proceeded to ask if the customer had an idea in mind for the use of the product and then began asking about the target group. The customer gave them vague replies: Customer ”I want this to be the, the temperature phone. It has to be, maybe more warm than cold, possibly, Do you know what I mean?” Head of Interaction Design ”kind of, no not really, but let’s see, do you have a target group, are we aiming at...” Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 77 The conversation carried on in a question answer format, ever moving closer to deﬁning some kind of concept. The Head of Interaction Design initiated the use of the UI building blocks, ”would it be possible for you to extract, use, take some of these objects just to categorize kind of, you said around forty years old, health conscious, but to kind of, if you choose let’s say four diﬀerent objects here that kind of characterize the target group of the user and also explain why you, you took those objects.” The customer ﬁrst chose a box of crayons, stating that the product should be colorful, ”getting expression with color, or it changing colors” then he picked up a metallic silver christmas tree ornament, stating, ”maybe it can use reﬂections and shinyness, its more important with color but this could also be very visually appealing,” as he placed the ornament on top of the crayons. He explained that the product should still be serious, be business like, but still colorful, and picked up a package of neon-pink Post-it Notes, stating that they were square, serious but colorful. He then exchanged the neon pink Post-it Notes for a package of dispensable Post-it tabs, explaining, ”maybe this is better, a more useful tool.” He then looked around, and said, ”yes of course, temperature, has to be warm,” picking up a pack of matches, and also adding a light bulb to his pile. ”But serious, we need something serious,” he reinforced, and picked up and shook a screwdriver, emphasizing its ’seriousness’. Next he chose a small black and red computer mouse, ”yes this, this really says it all.” The Head of Interaction Design asked him, ”in what way?”, the customer replied, ”its a work tool but it has got something fun to it you can use it for fun maybe as well or there’s a little bit of red on the side.” The nature of the discussion between participants was iterative, participants tried to take cues from one another and to build on any statements made. This could be considered iterative conversation: expanding ideas and concepts based on previous comments, feeding on key words and indicators of engagement, such as participants being urged to use objects and ﬁnding a way to do so. Participants took turns; the UI building blocks enabled iterative turn taking: each response building on the last; adding new levels of critique and analysis, eventually leading to connecting ideas through inferences to the UI building blocks and each other’s usage and reference of the blocks. When discussing what a UI or application could look like, participants used the objects on the table. The Head of Interaction Design explained that if the UI or application were to measure temperature, then it could use various elements to do so. He picked up a gold Christmas ornament, explaning, ”for instance, you know if this could be the daytime, because its sunny in a way, and what else could happen, you should be able to set the time, or the temperature, right, in some way, in the device, so you should have some kind of measuring gadget on the screen I guess.” He then picked up a ruler, to ’measure’ the temperature with; followed by a coﬀee stir stick which would be the Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 78 indicator on the measurement tool. The Graphic Designer then stepped in, replacing the coﬀee stir stick with a rabbit shaped door stopper, ”there could be some crazy visual feedback, it doesn’t have to be like an actual measure bar with an indicator on it, it could be like,” This prompted the ”customer” to ask, ”so will that bunny come alive when you reach the ideal temperature?” and the Graphic Designer to reply, ”maybe it will go to sleep.” The team investigated diﬀerent options and opportunities using the objects to spur conversation onwards, to test out ideas and to generate new thoughts inspired by the objects in front of them. The UI building blocks provided opportunity not only to refer to objects, expanding vocabulary, but also gave rise to discussions about color, texture, movement, interactivity, values, customer audience and aspects that haven’t even been considered yet but could be inﬂuenced by the UI building blocks. This shows that a huge opportunity to examine and play with the UI building blocks should be considered further. 6.2.3 Post Role-Playing Discussion After role-playing, participants were asked about how they felt about the UI building blocks and their experience with them. Participants said that the building blocks were hard to use, and that it felt forced since they were not used to it. They thought that it was good to have a new tool to use in customer meetings, and thought that it would foster creative thinking. They thought the task was a bit ”scary”, they weren’t initially sure how to use it but found that they could adapt to using it easily. They thought it was a much more useful tool than sketching, since even for the designer, (the TAT designer said ”especially for me”) it was diﬃcult to sketch out ideas, and that simply pointing to, or manipulating an object would be useful to show desires, associations, or to explain meaning. They commented that they wouldn’t necessarily think in a certain direction without objects present, such as when the bunny avatar was initiated during the role playing session. Participants felt that the activity gave the concept a good story; that pen and paper were inhibiting and this activity of using objects gave a clear view of what was or was not wanted, and further, that it would be easy to make changes since it simply meant picking up another object rather than starting a new sketch. Participants noticed that it would be easy to use this tool for the design stage, when the UI layout was being developed since objects could act as moveable place holders. The participants felt that this workshop would best be suited to an internal meeting as they would be hesitant to introduce the UI building blocks to an external customer as the participants thought that it might not be received well or as a professional practice. Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 79 However, they said that with established external clients it might be interesting to try. The role playing helped to open the design space for exploration of alternative types of communication. The UI building blocks were one method, with many sub meanings (such as color, texture, movement, interactivity, values, etc) that could help change the perspective, giving opportunity to a renewed sense of exploration, discovery and meaning making. 6.2.4 Discussion: Design of Cultural Probe When role playing and discussions regarding the content and use of the cultural probe were complete, the Graphic Designer and I discussed the cultural probe; in its prototype form it was in an orange box with TAT slogans glued to it. I wanted to give it a professional appearance, representing TAT. We decided on creating a box emblazoned with TAT’s design style. This would create a sense of identity and credibility for the customer viewing the customer kit and although the tasks within the box were, for the most part, trivial (in order to spark creative thought without deep dissection of questions on behalf of the customer) the box would be stylish and professional in appearance. The design for the box is shown in Figure 6.4 Figure 6.4: The Customer Kit cultural probe, as designed by a TAT designer. Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 80 6.3 Workshop 5 Discussion Workshop 5 uncovered interesting qualities about the developed tools for interpretation. As participants took part in playing their roles, and using the UI building blocks, and discussed the Customer Kit cultural probe, it became evident that these were potentially powerful tools for TAT’s demo process. Although the use of the UI building blocks was at ﬁrst uncomfortable, once participants had been using them, they became more familiar with the practice of use and began to allow themselves to be creative. An interesting phenomenon occurred wherein once one person (usually the Head of Interaction Design) had demonstrated that it was okay to use the objects, then it became okay for everyone to pick them up and to use them in conversation. Further, participants played with the objects while others were talking, a common distraction usually played out with a pen or doodling on paper as the distraction of choice, but in this case, handling the tools made it more comfortable for the participants to use them later, as UI building blocks. The TAT graphic designer played with the bunny door stopper for nearly seven minutes, turning it over in her hands, picking it up and putting it down again, before she eventually brought it into the conversation about how the UI could function. This shows that once participants are familiar with objects, it is not so uncomfortable to them to use the objects in conversation. Participants had commented after the workshop that it was ”diﬃcult” to use the objects in conversation, that it felt ”forced” but they agreed that if they were more practiced at using random objects to explain themselves that it could be a very useful tool in brainstorming sessions. Generally, people are uncomfortable with new tools, imagine what it must have been like to use the ﬁrst conference telephone system, the ﬁrst computer mouse, the ﬁrst mood board or mind map. I’m sure that these also would have been interesting moments, uncomfortable, unusual, but once people understood the rules of use, once the became familiar with handling and discussing the objects, it would have been interesting and beneﬁcial, as all of those tools are today. The Customer Kit cultural probe was deemed to be useful in creating a ﬁrst impression for the customer, and if the customer was internal, to provide encouragement. The person role playing the customer thought it was fun and said that completing the kit made him feel good. This indicates that the kit could perhaps be expanded, as a group we discussed if the answers to the probe questions had any relevance besides generating creative thinking. Should there be connections drawn between the answers given and the customer’s personality? It seemed as if the Customer Kit wasn’t quite ﬁnished but it wasn’t clear how it should be moved forward yet. Chapter 6. Results and Analysis Workshop 5 81 Participants seemed enthusiastic about the workshop, they were eager to try new tools and stated that they were happy to be involved in trying new ways to interpret meaning. Certainly, in any profession, having a new perspective on a situation has the potential to be inspiring and motivating; it is my hope that these tools oﬀer that, perhaps they will not be the key to unlocking meaning, (though I would hope that they do) but instead they could be a motivator, encouraging the TAT team to think in a diﬀerent way to embrace something new, to do things in a non-technological manner in order to foster creativity through social interaction and alternative means. The Customer Kit as an example is not a typical means to foster creativity, asking random questions, giving the customer ’homework’ but perhaps it is enough of a change in behavior that it would spark some creative motivation to try something new or think in a diﬀerent way. Chapter 7 Feedback Session 7.1 Feedback Session Overview The feedback session was intended to provide an overview of workshops held throughout the study; to introduce the two tools to stakeholders of TAT who were not present at Workshop 5; and to provide a forum for discussion on the developed tools. Invited to the meeting were the Vice President of Marketing, the Chief Technology Oﬃcer, the Lead Art Director, the Vice President of Design, and the Head of Interaction Design. Unfortunately, only the Vice President of Marketing and the Head of Design were able to attend, but this resulted in a detailed discussion between the remaining three of us. We examined the beneﬁts and limits of the developed tools for interpretation and discussed potential scenarios of use. From this workshop the opportunity to present the tools to the company was available and a feedback session with a variety of TAT staﬀ was held later within the same week. 7.1.1 Delivery of Information A presentation was created including photos and results from the ﬁve workshops, and an introduction to the two developed tools including photographs of the tools and a video presentation of the UI building blocks in use during Workshop 5. A formal design had been created for the Customer Kit (culture probe) in which a TAT designer had created a design for a box which was constructed and used as the cultural probe. (Figure 7.1) The design of the box represented TAT’s design style and could potentially act as an introduction to new customers, showing them TAT’s style and creativity practices through the design and use of the Customer Kit. The Customer Kit and UI building blocks were explained to participants: 82 Chapter 7. Feedback Session 83 Figure 7.1: The Customer Kit, as designed by TAT Designer, Emmy Lincoln. • Customer kit: kit that customers complete before initial meeting to facilitate creative thinking and open mindedness while giving TAT an idea of their personality. • UI building blocks: random objects scattered on table to facilitate explanation and metaphor use. Beneﬁts were explained: the Customer Kit prepares customer for creative thinking, giving them the boost needed to communicate their idea better and the UI building blocks can act as tools to help explain ideas and to facilitate communication. Further, if the customer is internal, the Customer Kit acts as a re-energizer, provoking requester into open mindedness and creating opportunity for new ideas. If the customer is external, Chapter 7. Feedback Session 84 the Customer Kit acts as a ﬁrst impression to TAT: funky TAT designed box, with interesting tasks, and a motivator for creative thinking. It was impressed upon participants that the UI building blocks can be used for internal meetings (not just demo process) and both tools encouraged the TAT team and customers to get away from the computer screen, promoting creative thinking and play. 7.1.2 Feedback from Vice President of Marketing and Head of Interaction Design on UI Building Blocks The discussion of the UI building blocks encompassed many subjects, including how to implement them, whether or not objects should be random and how verbal capabilities compared to tangible expression. Participants were supportive of using the UI building blocks, they thought that the practice of using them would be especially good for determining look and feel of a UI, how it should be visually interpreted. The Head of Interaction Design stated, ”when it comes to, you know, graphical (inaudible) shiny, colorful, hot cold, the feeling of the concept I think what we saw here was that it was useful in that case,” he explained how participants could express themselves regarding graphical choices more easily using the UI building blocks. To demonstrate some concept, color, look or feel that you have created in your mind is best achieved with tangible objects. People generally use words to describe what they mean, for instance, when describing color, they might say, ”well not white, not like, white-white, sort of oﬀ-white, maybe eggshell white?” and try to relate colors to objects that people could conjure an image of in their own minds. This requires a shared understanding of what ”eggshell” white entails and could have diﬀerent connotations for the two people. By providing the UI building blocks, participants can, to the best of their ability, explain themselves in terms of what is on the table, or relate objects on the table to other things that might be well enough known that the simple act of referencing an object on the table helps to establish meaning. The idea of selecting objects became a major focus in the feedback session. Would it be better to have random or pre-determined objects? The Vice President of Marketing said, ”its quite a task to actually select the objects so that you actually, actually can nd things that you need to symbolize, what you want to do.” We then discussed whether it was necessary to select objects, or if they should be randomized. I suggested that objects should be random, perhaps taken from a collection of objects, which could be separated into groups, and resorted every few weeks. In this way, selecting the objects wouldn’t be necessary, and people will have to put their own meaning into provided objects; hopefully making their meaning more clear by providing explanation for their Chapter 7. Feedback Session 85 choices. Theres a value in them being unexpected rather than to force people to pick through just anything. The Head of Interaction Design considered that people might have diﬀerent values for diﬀerent objects, such as the Christmas tree ball ornament might mean one type of shine to one customer and another type of shine to another customer and equally, could be interpreted in diﬀerent ways by the TAT team. This again emphasizes the need for interpretation to be established. An example from Workshop 5 was discussed. The customer in Workshop 5 had said he wanted it to be colorful but hadn’t deﬁned what colors he wanted speciﬁcally or the hues of those colors. The Head of Interaction Design commented, ”maybe pick out the colors that you want to have instead of just saying you know it should be colorful” (to establish shared meaning). It is not enough to say that customers can use the objects to describe their request, they must also ensure (or be provoked into ensuring) that their meaning about the object is transferred clearly to the TAT team who must also share the same meaning to gain correct interpretation. The participants further discussed that the type of customer would be important in determining the success of the UI building blocks. They explained that perhaps a ’special relationship’ was needed with the customer so that each party could be comfortable enough with each other to engage with the UI building blocks without hesitation. In this case, the customer should be someone familiar to the TAT team that they had worked with before and felt comfortable doing this type of activity with. This is important since it relates to creating a comfortable atmosphere, if people don’t feel comfortable, they will not be able to express themselves in the best way, and meaning will be lost. The Vice President of Marketing brought up sales people in this reference, that the sales department of TAT might have to receive an education of how to use the UI building blocks, and how to make customers comfortable using them; he explained that this was a diﬀerent task than their usual sales pitch and presentation and it might as uncomfortable for them to learn as it would be for the customers to learn how to use the tools. Finally, a discussion was held about verbal capabilities. Customers must be able to put into words what they want to describe, since ”none of the objects is one hundred percent match to what you actually want to have come out of it” as stated by the Vice President of Marketing. Good communication and an open discussion are necessary to achieve the necessary verbal communication which can then be supplemented by tangible interaction with the objects. Chapter 7. Feedback Session 86 7.1.3 Feedback from Vice President of Marketing and Head of Interaction Design on Customer Kit (Cultural Probe) The Customer Kit was examined in terms of how it could be used, and if it would be accepted. Participants explained that the kit would give them a good ”feel” or understanding for the customer, and that primarily, it would act as a test to see if the UI building blocks would be appropriate to use with a given customer. We discussed the diﬀerent types of companies that might use the kit, whether they could be business or corporate minded or if they could only be creative companies. Finally we discussed additions to the kit. In explaining that customers could be chosen to participate (or not) in the UI building blocks activity, the Head of Interaction Design said, ”I think its a good way to get a feel for what kind of customer it is. Is it a verbal you know the, an easy person to express what they want themselves, but can also give an indication that we could use other creative parts like having objects laying around.” He explains that to determine if the person would be suitable for the UI building blocks activity, that his answers to the kit should considered, if they express themselves in a creative way, TAT will feel comfortable sharing the UI building blocks activity with them; however, if they are very concise and corporate in their answers then perhaps it would be best to stick with typical business practices. One worry was that creativity might be lost if people are insecure and don’t feel up to the challenge of being creative independently while working on the kit. But perhaps the answer is to make it playful, and not make it a requirement, instead making it a fun activity to warm up the customer. The right attitude must be established when presented the kit and when expectations of interaction with it are explained. If the right attitude of playfulness and creativity is not conveyed then it may just seem like a task and indeed, the gains would be minimized. In discussing customers, types of companies were considered. If the customer is from a creatively thinking company then it should not be so diﬃcult to engage them in activities like the Customer Kit. However, if they are more conservative, they may not be willing or able to think creatively enough, or outside-the-box in such a way which allows the tools to be useful for them. Also discussed were additions to the Customer Kit which were implemented before the kit was introduced to the company. These included several types of questions that all asked about media related subjects; this would help to gain an understanding of the customer’s attitude and help to distinguish creative customers from more corporate minded customers. In Workshop 4, it had been suggested that customers give examples Chapter 7. Feedback Session 87 of video (Youtube) material they liked, or to do Google image searches, however during the creation of the Customer Kit, this was considered and determined to be negative for the customer, they would have to search for hours to get the right image, the right video to portray what they wanted. In all of the following examples, rather than making the customer search, it relies on pre-existing material that they have encountered, which also reduces the bias of the customer to answer in a speciﬁc way, such as ﬁnding a video that they think TAT might like to see them viewing. • Have you seen a good video on Youtube lately? (With the option to enter the name or description of the video) • Did you read 24 or Metro today? (What’s a story headline you read?) • Do you read the comics in the newspaper? • Have you seen an advertisement on the street today that caught your eye? These were described by the Vice President of Marketing as being ”outward reﬂecting” questions, designed to provoke responses of recalling media and creative materials, and to gauge the customer’s personality. The suggestions for additions were varied, with the above additions chosen since they encompassed a range of media including video, print, art, and advertising. More could have been chosen but I decided to keep the Customer Kit to less than 10 questions (as presented to the company, at nine items) since it would seem less onerous for the customer. The Customer Kit could provide insight into the customer for TAT, and also could be inspirational and could generate creative thinking in the customer. The Head of Interaction Design commented that it would provide a ”new way of thinking” and would be valuable considering solely this beneﬁt. 7.1.4 Introducing tools to TAT, the company A presentation was made to the company, introducing the two tools. The presentation was six minutes long and brieﬂy explained the process leading to the development of the tools. It highlighted the beneﬁts of the customer kit for internal and external customers and focused on the UI building blocks as a tool that the entire company could use rather than just those involved in the demo process. It was important to introduce these tools to TAT as a whole. By providing them with a new tool set, it hopefully initiated some new creative thinking and methods of working. If the UI building blocks can be used by various departments perhaps it will spark new Chapter 7. Feedback Session 88 ideas. If the customer kit can be used internally as a motivator or a way to think away from the computer then it has served its purpose also. The ideal is that these tools will foster creativity and give motivation to those in a creative industry. 7.1.5 Feedback from TAT about Customer Kit and UI Building Blocks Immediately after the presentation, one person, who works within the innovation sector of TAT explained that he had recently tried something similar to UI building blocks with a customer, encouraging them to use whatever was nearby to express themselves more easily. Another person commented that he had just been inspired, suggesting that a comments wall be put up in the main meeting area so that people could write their thoughts after each monthly meeting and easily give them to upper management via this system. After my presentation, another presenter, discussing a recently released demo, commented, ”our request was vague and diﬃcult to clarify,” and referenced my presentation as a potential future means to solve this problem. This three brief examples demonstrate how easily people can become engaged in an idea, inspired by it, and can consider it for future use. People generally seemed to appreciate the introduction of a new tool set, and the opportunity to use it as a discussion point. Other people were asked what they had thought of the tools: A designer stated that it would need to be implemented company wide in TAT, that everyone should be involved to make it beneﬁcial. She further commented that TAT should be creative since having the customer kit would create an impression of TAT being creative and TAT would actively have to live up to that expectation. She said that its useful right now since everyone is so focused on ”time crunching”, on getting in paying customers and that it would be a relief, that people in TAT need some creative inspiration. An engineer thought the tools were very inspirational, he commented that the UI building blocks make conversation tangible, and give people less to read. Since he works directly with establishing functions of the UIs designed, he said that having the UI building blocks would be useful for his team, since they could work with interactivity, showing sliding, bending, ”using a bit of physics to deﬁne something” would be useful, he said. A software designer said he liked the Customer kit a lot, ”its a good and smart method of interacting with the customer”. He commented, for him, the UI building blocks should not be random, perhaps they could be pseudo random, but could present characteristics such as being soft, or round. He thought that a diﬀerent approach might be to physically Chapter 7. Feedback Session 89 make a tangible UI, make all the UI parts in the physical world and be able to move them around, to rearrange how they worked together, and that this could be useful for developers. An interaction designer said, ”people can’t doodle, they’re too scared to draw, and some can’t express themselves well verbally so the objects are ideal for expression”. The Vice President of Design cautioned about the use of abstractions, explaining that the UI building blocks might be too forward-thinking for some clients who appreciate a very concrete, business minded approach. She said that the target audience would have to be creative and emphasized the need to know the audience and prepare for them accordingly. A session where people could try out the UI building blocks would have been ideal but the atmosphere (after work, Friday social gathering) didn’t allow for it and so these discussions provided an overview into the diﬀerent perspectives and reactions from staﬀ at TAT. 7.2 Discussion of feedback sessions The contribution of new tools in an established design process can inspire and motivate participants. Participants stated how ’inspirational’ they had found both the tools and the introduction of the tools, the simple action of having tools introduced to them was enough to inspire them to think in new ways, as was the case with the comments wall suggestion. As explained by the designer, people need creative inspiration. Despite the fact that everyone at TAT is inherently creative themselves, their own practices need refreshing and an interesting change in routine can oﬀer that. It was interesting to discuss the two tools in detail with the Vice President of Marketing and the Head of Interaction Design. This discussion gave us the opportunity to constructively criticize the tools, examining how they could be used and how they could be improved. Examining the construction of meaning within the UI building blocks raised interesting questions such as how to transfer meaning even with a form of tangible communication, that interpretation still needed to be emphasized and would not come easily. With the Customer Kit, considering types of customers, comfort levels and creating the additions helped to clarify the role of the Customer Kit and to ﬁnd new uses for it than simply fostering creative thinking. Considering how well-received the tools were by TAT, it is hoped that they adopt use of the UI building blocks and hopefully that they ﬁnd a customer to try the Customer Kit Chapter 7. Feedback Session 90 with. The enthusiasm for new tools indicated a need for inspiration and people seemed excited by the prospect of testing the tools. Chapter 8 Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 8.1 Conclusion This thesis has explored a number of areas, focusing on prototyping, tangible communication, collaborative workshops, and interpretation. Collaborative participatory design workshops have been developed to discover areas of improvement through open discussion, and the development of a speciﬁc focus through workshops has identiﬁed interpretation of the customer request as a focus and considered ways to improve it. In TAT, communication between customer and the TAT team determines a concept for a demo, and this concept becomes the product that the company sells. It is crucial to establish communication not only as something occurring; of course communication happens, but establishing the transition of meaning from customer to TAT, focusing on TAT’s interpretation of meaning. Through dialogue, meaning making is established; customer and TAT come to a veriﬁed agreement about what has been understood and if it is correct. This is the interpretation that is necessary for the needed communication leading to a successful demo. This focus on interpretation structures the rest of the demo process and creates awareness about how to approach other issues within the demo process. Throughout this exploration, prototyping has been used as a means to express in a tangible way, communicated meaning that might otherwise be lost verbally. Prototyping has helped create the opportunity for interpretation; through cultural probes (the Customer Kit) the customer becomes part of the design process and can think in a creative manner and consider their values from atypical perspectives. Through the use of the UI building blocks, TAT as a 91 Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 92 whole has an opportunity to creatively express themselves. TAT previously used a combination of techniques to express themselves in meetings: presentations, white board sketching or use of Post-it Notes; with the UI building blocks, they learn a new way to interact and share meaning; ideally to express meaning that cannot easily be expressed in verbal conversation alone. Central to this work has been to explore how a particular local prototyping practice could be developed for TAT when communicating with the customer. The development of a specialized prototyping tool is similar to the development of Fanagalo, the Lingua Franca language mentioned earlier. [4] Fanagalo is common to South African miners; it had to be localized, speciﬁc to practice and easy enough for many people to adopt its use. For TAT, involving the company in the design process has allowed the tools to emerge from workshops. It has been important to conduct participatory design workshops to explore where and how TAT is involved in deﬁning the concepts for demos. Workshops conducted have been led, participants were invited, encouraged to discuss, collaborated, and through their own interaction, the concept for the tools was born. Through low-ﬁ prototyping and ethnographic observation of TAT’s dialogue practices while they were participating in workshops, it became clear that the tools developed needed to be speciﬁc to TAT’s environment and company practices. Therefore, without the qualitative discussions participants had, there would be no tools; or tools developed would not be suitable for the task, the type and use practices of tools would have been assumed and very likely would not have matched the needs of participants. This is close to what Friedman [3] explained about design failure; failure would occur when a failure to understand the design process was present. In this case, the design process understanding was based on the inclusion of participants as designers. As such, the focus is the collaborative creation of tools for interpretation, or how involving a selective group of people contributes to the design of new tools. This study has established communication about the demo process, has uncovered issues, and has facilitated participants talking together about something which receives little attention as a problem. Participants use the demo process in their work routine, they are engaged in it and rely on it to produce demos but in being so involved, have little time to analyze and ﬁx problems existing within the process; much less spend time analyzing ways to improve parts that are already functioning. Brandt discusses how it is important to include people who are within the process since moments within workshops ”often reveal[ed] aspects that had been overlooked in the design”. [9] The most important part of the process was the initial three workshops, since they helped participants to look at their own process reﬂectively and analytically. By taking turns in shared experiences and suggestions, participants were able to explore and then practice what needs to be Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 93 done with customers, establishing and sharing meaning through communications which ware constantly corrected and veriﬁed. These three workshops raised awareness about existing issues within the demo process and highlighted where potential problems could occur, and how they could be avoided. Personal relations have been established between all participants in the demo process, who have begun to discuss issues and to realize each other’s roles. Although most people within the demo process know each other quite well, they may not be completely aware of each other roles, and can beneﬁt from discussion and analysis of the demo process since it helps them understand both their own, and other’s roles within the process. Brandt cautions on this point, [9] to vary participants in each workshop because they can be familiar with each other’s roles and will take that knowledge for granted. Therefore it was important throughout the process to put emphasis on clarifying and exploring roles. Relations between cause and eﬀect in the demo process have been given attention, participants are now aware of these problems as major issues that need to be re-evaluated, such as the customer projects dilemma. Participants have been made aware, through discussion, through mind-mapping, storytelling, or diagrams what issues are relevant and which need to be resolved. Outside the focus of this study, the problem of paying customer projects taking time, energy and consistency from the demo process is a major issue that has been highlighted through the process of running workshops for this study. The process of exploring the demo process clearly indicated that collaborative dialogue leading to interpretation was of higher value than developing concepts alone. Specifically within the demo request stage, the value of communication, meaning, interpretation, and concept have been examined and given varying values of importance. For instance, communication is given a higher importance than concept, since meaning must be interpreted through communication in order to reach a concept. It is important to realize the impact of giving qualities of the demo process value judgements: by giving priority to interpretation of customer request, perhaps the idea generation stage in the demo process is given less value or attention, or by focusing on only the demo request stage, other parts of the demo process, such as the design stage, do not get the required attention. In this study, it was decided to give priority and value to the interpretation part of the demo request stage. It was determined that this stage would be best to examine since it could have an impact on the other, also valuable stages and sectors. As explained by Lucero et al [23] the identiﬁcation of values, and shifting of perspectives is necessary to move forward in design. Value must be deﬁned in terms of perceived impact. I perceive that interpretation will have a great impact on the rest of the demo process but, for example, from the perspective of someone in design, this might not seem Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 94 so important for them, since it does not directly aﬀect their own process. Value must be considered as subtle at points, though still having an impact overall. 8.1.1 Design Consequences and Reﬂections The design consequences in this thesis must be examined from two points of view, the TAT demo process and the participatory design process used to explore this. For TAT, we were examining their demo process, speciﬁcally the demo request stage; in this process, they were designing concepts and so it became a study of two processes. In examining the design consequences, I will present what has been accomplished for TAT and for myself and then examine, in general terms the impact of prototyping, participatory design, use of tools and inspiration. 8.1.2 TAT’s Design Process Throughout this process, TAT has had the opportunity to re-examine their own demo process. By asking TAT to explain the demo process to me from all the diﬀerent perspectives, I was able to create an environment for reﬂection for those involved in the process. TAT was able to examine a process that they traditionally have to push through to meet demands; they don’t usually have much time to analyze the process. Examining their own process helped them to identify roles, responsibilities and interactions between diﬀerent people involved. This study emphasized how the early demo process is a contradiction in terms; it must be both exploratory and open and precise and closed at the same time. To achieve this, TAT must focus, concentrating on uncovering meaning, and gaining the most they can in terms of shared meaning from the customer. If my initial activities as Demo Manager are considered, the constructed Demo Land was very precise, but not very exploratory; it was closed to dialogue, and open to information entry. It failed to allow TAT to explore meaning making through dialogue, inhibiting correct interpretation. Instead, it was unresponsive, a static information bank lacking the necessary dialogue to properly establish shared meaning. The creation of the two tools helped to boost creative thinking; participants recognized how the tools could beneﬁt their design work and through the use of new tools, creativity could be attained. Further, participants saw the opportunity for the tools to contribute to the establishment of shared meaning. Since interpretation is derived from shared meaning, participants were enthusiastic about the potential for better concepts through the use of the tools. Providing TAT with new tools, even the brainstorming for new tools, Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 95 was an inspirational process. Participants were able to consider what would beneﬁt them and could consider methods they already practice versus those they hadn’t really tried. An example of this is mood boards; TAT design does extensive work on mood boards for customers, wherein typically a solo designer takes about a week to take inspiration from the customer’s request and develop it into a mood board. TAT doesn’t usually do on-the-spot mood boards which would involve extensive dialogue with customers. On-the-spot prototyping like this is what Tom Kelley from Ideo [? ] discusses in the examples of the emergency ﬁlming location or Amazon.com: working with what you’ve got and gaining as much meaning as possible from the situation at hand. Considering additions to their design process or reviewing existing elements was interesting for TAT. They could consider new possibilities for interaction. TAT can then evaluate the role of the interaction, was it between people? Was it between person and artifact? Examining this interaction, the socio-material circumstances [18] as Bj¨rvinsson terms it, also helps o when trying to establish meaning. This process further supports Cross’ deﬁnition of design research, people, process, and products. [10] The people are the participants and the customer, using the tools both as the tools were intended to be used and creating new uses for them, such as TAT using the UI building blocks internally within TAT’s own meetings, or using the Customer kit to gain insight about whether TAT could further employ creative tactics with speciﬁc customers. The process is the process that TAT went through during this study, identifying the need for interpretation: shared meaning through dialogue, and the development and use of tools to facilitate that. Finally, the product is two fold, there are tools which have been developed to help with interpretation, and the design process has resulted in a greater awareness on the part of TAT about their demo process, the demands of the demo request stage, the roles people play within that process and the need to understand their customers more clearly. The use of low-ﬁ prototyping throughout this study gave participants a break from their traditional use of technology, allowing for easier collaborative work. Since TAT is a high tech company, they use laptops and bring their laptops with them to meetings, home, to travel with, and when they are not using their laptops, they have fairly advanced mobile phones to replace the role of their laptops. This results in few breaks from interfacing with technology. The establishment of workshops in which no technology was used (with the exception of presentation slides in the last two workshops) was an interesting addition to their design process. By removing technology and asking participants to focus on dialogue, collaboration, and tangible communication methods such as the UI building blocks, the focus moved away from technology and into creative idea generation. Since typically in TAT, one person controls a computer which plays a presentation, the focus is on technology. Any potential collaboration is channeled through that one person and their technology, since they control it through the solo interface of mouse Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 96 and keyboard. By moving to low-ﬁ prototyping and collaboration, more discussion is encouraged, multiple points of interaction are simultaneously permitted and people can actually discuss matters together rather than in a restrictive, one-person-in-charge manner. As Frishberg [11] explains, discussions deepen people’s understanding of the issue, and as Brandt emphasizes, [9] the uncovering of shared values and beliefs can occur as a ”fruitful learning experience”. Staging the workshops to encourage participants to behave more socially or in a physical, tangible way, such as by giving participants Postit Notes, markers, papers, and the UI building blocks further helped to contribute to collaborative, interactive dialogue. When deﬁning the demo process on the white board with Post-it Notes in Workshop 1, it could have easily been done online through a wiki or interactive ’demo stages interface’ however it was much more interesting to see how participants interacted socially, how they reacted to each other’s choices in real time, and how those reactions sparked new conversations. TAT’s design process beneﬁtted from attention. The focus on the demo process, and the analysis of the demo request stage led to TAT being able to focus on their own design process. They were able to discuss it, analyze roles and responsibilities and establish suggestions for improvement; all without the stigma of considering it a formal company investigation into process. Perhaps if it had been a formal internal investigation of company practices, results and responses would have been quite diﬀerent and perhaps more conservative. Since it was for a thesis project, the environment felt very open, generative, and even playful; allowing for suggestions and open discussion from all present. 8.1.3 Thesis design process: insights and learning outcomes Nothing goes according to plan, thus, there is a need to be ﬂexible and adaptive. This was one of the main learning outcomes from this study. Every workshop held had an interesting twist: the invited people didn’t all show up; the demo stages in Workshop 1 didn’t adhere to one set of rules as assumed; a large discussion regarding staﬀ allocation in the process (rather than brainstorming) erupted during Workshop 4; only two participants showed up to the formal feedback session, and many more examples. These all required quick thinking to turn the experience into a positive and generative one. Each time something unexpected occurred, it gave me a signiﬁcant insight into the internal workings of TAT, if people were not able to attend meetings they had conﬁrmed for, it demonstrated how busy and preoccupied participants were, the environment at TAT is fast-paced and full of surprises and creative energy which can result in sudden and unexpected projects popping up, generated from on-the-spot inspiration. Each opportunity I had to analyze why something didn’t go according to plan, or when I had to adjust an Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 97 activity made for six participants to be useful for two, showed me how it was possible to generate solutions on the spot while keeping participants engaged in the process. Importantly, I learned that I cannot dictate a design process. To be successful and useful for participants it must involve participants and consider their comments, situations and suggestions, and must actively involve them in the design process. When Workshop 1 began, I thought that creating a process of rules and structure would lead to an improved demo process but was quickly corrected. One person designing a process that they are not involved in, for other people, especially those of a creative nature, is not possible; people in the process won’t feel a part of it unless they’ve helped to design it, they won’t respect it and feel conﬁdent in it unless they understand the reasoning behind it, and they won’t be able to be creative with restrictions and tight requirements, a certain level of ﬂexibility is required to create an ideal process. My design process became adaptable. I understood that the process needed to be ﬂexible, it should adapt to the needs and demands of participants and focus on how to create opportunities rather than restrictions. Focusing on low-ﬁ prototyping and methods throughout this study oﬀered me the opportunity to examine on a more social scale how people interacted with one another and how that interaction could be useful for understanding processes and requirements of participants. Observing behavior in Workshop 1 helped to establish procedures for the next two workshops. Workshop 4 was designed with the participants in mind, they often write ideas on Post-it Notes and put these on the table or on the walls so instead of just verbally discussing the brainstormed concepts, I instead had participants post their ideas on sheets on the walls to facilitate the behavior patterns that they already are comfortable following. Along this same line of thought, my mobile phone was used to record sessions rather than an audio recorder which would be a foreign object in the environment and might detract attention from the conversation. Using my mobile phone, a common object at TAT, to record sessions resulted in people ignoring the phone’s presence and speaking normally. Creating the two tools was a direct result of participants highlighting these ideas in the brainstorming session. They had said these ideas were new and seemed fun and so I moved to develop those. It was important to sift through other favorite ideas, and ﬁnd what really motivated them. In doing this, I learned about detecting enthusiasm, for my process, it was important to focus on enthusiastic responses whenever possible since I knew that I was using valuable time and keeping managers away from their departments for minimum times of an hour per workshop. I wanted to provide the most value for their time that I was able to, keeping workshops concise and focusing on how to motivate them and recognize when they were excited about a concept. This ability to recognize Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 98 came from observation, I began to see patterns of behavior, how participants answered questions, if they seemed routine, or if they were genuinely excited about something, and then pursuing the less-routine responses. 8.1.4 Considering the design process and tools developed The design process throughout this study was complicated to review, jumping between TAT’s design process and the design process for this study. However, the overall results were the creation of the two tools for interpretation; the Customer kit and the UI building blocks. Both have been well received by TAT and have given TAT something new to consider, something to inspire their creativity. These tools oﬀer TAT the opportunity to interpret their customers and using prototyping, interpret each other through exploratory dialogue using the tools. Using the UI building blocks to better express oneself and the Customer kit to act as a gauge and facilitator of creative energy contributes to TAT and customers working together to create a shared meaning; leading to a demo concept. The tools also yielded unexpected results: TAT employees are excited about the potential use of the UI building blocks used internally to better understand each other. Further the uses of the UI building blocks were considered in other ways, as representations of physics for engineers and as tangible pieces of the UI for software visualization. Considering prototyping as a main focus in this study was a shift in prototyping practices within TAT’s established demo process; TAT typically used traditional business means such as presentation or sketching within the demo request stage and had not used prototyping extensively during this stage. One outcome of this was the established ability to project ideas through other means than verbal; thus tangible communication, using physical references to describe ideas, and to express more clearly verbally communicated meaning. This verbal exchange must again be considered in terms of values, where does the importance lie? Surely, it is important to verbally communicate meaning, but as in the case of sketching, when does it become too detailed? These considerations must be reviewed throughout the design process for it to be successful. The UI building blocks were developed as the tool to enhance verbally communicated meaning and the Customer kit was representative of the need to have low-ﬁ solutions to gaining information. Both oﬀered a low-ﬁ, low technology, tangible solution, and both were a way to establish meaning. The Customer kit theoretically allowed the customer to express themselves without the pressure of a meeting, establishing creative thinking practices and providing an introduction to TAT (both for customer to company and company to customer) before the meeting. This is a theoretical predication however, Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 99 both on my part and echoed by participants during Workshop 5 and the feedback session since the Customer kit was only tried out in a role playing scenario. This point would be interesting to further develop and test with real customers but unfortunately, that opportunity was not possible during this study. The UI building blocks oﬀer a solution for lack of an adequate common language, a problem when working in a creative environment that cannot easily be solved unless language barriers are overcome. It was determined that the UI building blocks should ideally be random, perhaps there could be a large bank of objects where from a random selection was taken for a meeting. This was an ongoing discussion, should objects be given a value and qualities (but perhaps then be too concrete?) or should they be fresh and randomized to push creative thinking? Giving the objects a concrete meaning makes them more comforting and familiar but making them random appeals to the creative construction of ideas and pushes the limitations of the concept. Either way, the UI building blocks oﬀered the opportunity to extend meaning into objects and to gain a better understanding of the other person through observation and association. Design was passed on to participants. The workshops were of a collaborative nature, encouraging participation and activities were developed to keep people on track (paper demo stages, white board Post-it assistant, paper on walls to have a point of focus). The Customer kit passes on the design process to the customer, inviting them to take part in creative thinking and simply by answering the given questions, gives TAT a concept of who the customer is, their likes and dislikes and whether further creative measures (such as the UI building blocks) can be taken with them. The question of how will people use the UI building blocks in the future arises; participants role-playing with the UI building blocks were able to use the concept to deﬁne characteristics of users and the look and feel of the UI. When introduced to TAT as a whole, people thought that it would be possible to use them in many diﬀerent situations, including to conceptualize physics movement for engineers, and to represent physical placement of parameters for software designers. The UI building blocks act as a creative means for people to express themselves better, they facilitate conversation and extend verbal capabilities and give people who don’t speak the design language an aid to join in conversation. Interpretation can also be re-examined, what do the tools help TAT to interpret? Ideally they help facilitate dialogue, leading to shared meaning and thus to TAT’s correct interpretation o the customer’s request. However, when examined more closely, the tools aided in classifying interpretation into groups: in Workshop 5, the UI building blocks helped determine characteristics of potential users, outlining what they might like or dislike; in other cases the look and feel of the UI was deﬁned using the UI building blocks. Using the Customer kit in Workshop 5 helped to gain insight into the customer’s likes and dislikes, leading to familiarity with the customer and thus, a closer dialogue and Chapter 8. Conclusion and Design Consequences and Reﬂections 100 a clearer interpretation. Again, the question of comfort versus discomfort arises here: would customers accept the use of the customer kit? Would they be willing to do it and how would that change or enhance their impression of TAT as a company? This creative versus corporate outlook must be considered as well as how each customer might react to the use of either the customer kit or the UI building blocks. Acknowledging awareness of these diﬀerences makes it easy to understand that a constructive and creative dialogue between people using the tools is necessary. Further, as Ehn explains (as referenced in Brandt’s work, [9]) outlining the rules for use of the tools helps participants to initiate interaction with them. The rules in this case could be deﬁnition of waht is being interpreted: characteristics of potential users, look and feel of UI, theme, genre, or other areas needing clariﬁed shared meaning between customer and TAT. Both tools developed are representative of the process preceding them. They are inspirational, generate creative thinking, are representative of problems and also of well functioning areas within the demo process, and highlight especially the need to concentrate on establishing meaning, through correct interpretation in any situation; though especially in the moment when a customer’s desire is communicated and developed into a concept. Appendix A Workshop 5 UI building blocks objects Objects of the UI building blocks for Workshop 5 included: • Metallic card holder • Action Figure • Bottle caps • Button-pins (decorative) • Mini bunny ﬁgurine • Coﬀee stir stick • Post it notes (yellow, pink) • Hard drive components (needle, disc, spindle, read/write head) • Crayons in a box • Photo IDs from various people (cards) • 3 Christmas Ornament balls (Gold, Shiny Silver, Matte Silver) • Measuring ruler • Masking tape • Large packing tape dispenser • Screw driver 101 Appendix A. Workshop 5 UI building blocks objects • Post it dispenser • Wii Remote • Matches • Light bulb • Computer mouse • Phone charging station • Bunny book end • Mobile phone 102 Figure A.1: Test workshop: playing with UI building blocks. Appendix B Journey of the design question Following is a diagram illustrating the course of the design question from it’s initial proposal to the ﬁnal structuring of the question put forth by this study. 103 The journey of the design question What is the demo process? How can it be improved? 104 Workshop 1 Attendees: Products, Design, Innovation Demo process overview Secondary focus: Customer projects Exploring roles, meetings, goals Workshop 2 Appendix B. Journey of the design question Attendees: Marketing, Technology, Art Direction Demo process overview (mangerial) Secondary focus: restructured demo process Exploring roles, responsibilities ?= .1 Workshop 3 How to create better communication in the demo request stage? Attendees: Interaction Design, Art Direction for design Demo request stage overview Secondary focus: Prototyping for feedback Exploring their own roles ?= .2 How to transfer meaning in the demo request stage? ?= .3 Primary outcomes of Workshops 1 - 3 Focus on: demo request stage, clear communication Need to: establish goals, and early concept approval Interested in: roles in demo request stage, communication practices, how to agree on communication. How to improve interpretation in the demo request stage between customer and TAT? } Workshop 4 Brainstorming tools for interpretation. (2 Chosen) Workshop 5 Customer kit UI building blocks Tested with TAT staff Then onwards to feedback... Figure B.1: A visual map to understanding the journey of the design question ? } Appendix C TAT Hierarchy A diagram illustrating the hierarchy of the primary participants within this study. Of primary participants in study TAT Hierarchy Lead Art Director Chief Technology Officer Vice President Marketing Products Manager Vice President Design Tenk - Innovation Head Interaction Design Art Director Design Figure C.1: Participants involved in the demo process 105 Appendix D Workshop 4 Email, Suggestions In this email, I ask TAT staﬀ to contribute their ideas for the Customer kit and the UI building blocks. Answers from two participants are displayed in italics in the text. D.1 Email From: Vanessa Carpenter [mailto:vanessajcarpenter@gmail.com] Sent: den 3 februari 2009 18:05 To: Ola Lars´n; Simon Thorsander; Erica Josefsson; Fredrik Ademar Subject: e Re: Concepts - Email Brainstorming Hi all, I’m hoping that everyone can take a few minutes to read and ﬁll out the below. I know everyone is quite busy but it would be a tremendous help for me as I’m writing the majority of my thesis this week! Hopefully we can test out some of these ideas in the coming weeks. Thank you, Vanessa On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Vanessa Carpenter ¡vanessajcarpenter@gmail.com¿ wrote: Hello I realise that everyone is quite busy and of course, preparing for MWC, so I am hoping that perhaps I can achieve a small meeting’s work via email to save time and energy for all. (Can someone please forward to Per G since email I send him gets bounced back). 106 Appendix D. Email discussing Customer Kit and UI building block suggestions 107 From our last meeting regarding my thesis about going from ’desire to concept’ within the ﬁrst meeting with a (internal) customer, two main concepts stood out as something interesting to try. These were the ’kit’ (using the hair style metaphor) and the ’UI building blocks’; we deﬁned the building blocks as being similiar to a moodboard and discussed using image searches, or even having scraps of inspirational materials on the table, or random objects to work with, to describe what one might want. (Hold up a pencil to show a scrollbar). My questions then, are: 1) If we are to give a kit to a customer, to complete as homework, before the meeting, and this kit must be small and intriguing enough to convince said customer to do homework, what should be in it? Any ideas are welcome. I’m thinking, favorite website/color/youtube video, theme, word relating to UI, random questions, things to get them thinking before the meeting... [Input from Head of Interaction Design, Simon Thorsander] To begin with I think the initiative is really good and I absolutely think we should go for it. But my experience is that customers seldom put in the time to create any extensive input – even if we urge them to (eg. Through easy and fast to ﬁll out forms). My experience comes from my two last jobs as well as from TAT. BUT maybe a kit as a new approach would work!!! Better try it then not. . . ! [Input from VP Marketing, Ola Larsen] Inspirational videos from Youtube I think would be of most value/or Google images I think all above suggestions are good, potentially we could add (just brainstorming): Watch, Car, Furniture, Font, Target group description, Music piece, Movie, Phone model. . . 2)If there were to be building blocks (random objects also) on the table for customers and Tatters to use as tools during the meeting, to assist in describing things, what could some of those objects be? Input from Head of Interaction Design, Simon Thorsander: Wooden blocks, Paper Cards, Everyday objects such as: Phone book, music CD, DVD, Calendar, Calculator, Polaroid Photos, Pencil, GameWatch console. . . Input from VP Marketing, Ola Larsen: Lego/Duplo, Wood blocks in diﬀerent shapes If everyone could please email their suggestions by the 31st, that would be fantastic. Key words, full sentences, pictures, examples, anything would do, just go nuts with ideas, and I will incorporate those into a practice run, which we’ll initially try out on the 16th Feb. (I know most of you are in Barcelona, but I’m hoping Simon, Oscar and Dan are free) and then another when you’re all back and de-stressed. :) Appendix D. Email discussing Customer Kit and UI building block suggestions 108 Many thanks for all your help with this, I truly appreciate it, and the meetings/workshops so far have been fantastic. Sincerely, Vanessa Bibliography [1] Keld Bødker and Jesper Pedersen. Worksplace Cultures: Looking at Artifacts, Symbols and Practices. Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, N.J., 1991. [2] Pelle Ehn and Dan Sj¨gren. From System Descriptions to Scripts for Action. o Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, N.J., 1991. [3] Ken Friedman. Theory construction in design research: criteria: approaches, and methods. Design Studies, 24, 2003. [4] Rajend Adendorﬀ. Language in South Africa. Cambridge University Press,, 2002. [5] Participatory Design: A multi-voiced eﬀort, Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management (IPL), Building 424, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark, October 2005. Technical University of Denmark, AARHUS’05. [6] CHI, editor. Participatory Design through Games and Other Group Exercises, Boulder CO US and Piscataway NJ US, April 1994. U S WEST Technologies and Bellcore, CHI. [7] International HIV/AIDS Alliance. A Facilitators’ Guide to Participatory Workshops with NGOs/CBOs Responding to HIV/AIDS, November 2001. [8] CHI, editor. Reﬂections on Participatory Design: Lessons from the Trillium Experience, 1990. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, CHI. [9] Eva Brandt. Event Driven Project Management. PhD thesis, Denmark Technical University. [10] Nigel Cross. Designerly Ways of Knowing. Birkh¨user Basel, 2007. a [11] Nancy Frishberg. Prototyping with junk. Interactions, 2006. [12] Scott Isensee Jim Rudd, Ken Stern. Low vs high ﬁdelity prototyping debate. Interactions, 1996. 109 Bibliography 110 [13] Dan Saﬀer. The role of metaphor in interaction design. Master’s thesis, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005. [14] Paul Dourish. Where the Action Is. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001. [15] Fiona Raby Anthony Dunne. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. August / Birkhauser, 2001. [16] J. A. Landay. Interactive sketching for the early stages of user interface design. Carnegie Mellon University, 1996. [17] Greg Guest Jeanette L. Blomberg, Mark Burrell. An Ethnographic Approach to Design. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 2003. [18] Erling Bj¨rgvinsson. Socio-Material Mediations. Blekinge Institute of Technology, o 2007. ˆ [19] Luiz Velho Cesar T. Pozzer Angelo E. M. Ciarlini Antonio L. Furtado Paula S.L. Rodrigues, Bruno Feij´. Narrating stories in participatory games, 2004. o [20] 02 2009. URL http://www.mapyourmind.com/howto.htm. [21] Helen Sharp Matt Davies Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers. Paper prototyping as a core tool in the design of mobile phone user interfaces. [22] Sarah Pennington William W. Gaver, Andrew Boucher and Brendan Walker. Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty. PhD thesis, Interaction Design, Royal College of Art, 2004. [23] ACM, editor. How Probes Inform and Inﬂuence the Design Process, August 2007. ACM. [24] Ben Volpov Vanessa Carpenter, Brian Lien. The playchair. Simon Fraser University IART 333 Final Paper, 2006. [25] On the Spot Experiments Within Healthcare, volume Proceedings Participatory Design Conference, 2004. Arts and Communication, Malm¨ University. o

From Desire to Concept: A collaborative participatory design process exploring a mobile development company's design process, focusing on low-fi prototyping. more

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