The discipline of design is in a constant state of change. As noted in the previous post one of the most significant trends currently impacting on design practice is the opening up of the design process. Design is moving out from the studio and into the wild, taking place where people live [1].  Users are being re-cast as co-designers, co-creators and co-developers. Trends such as ‘open design’, ‘crowdsourcing’, designing for design in use, post-release iterations and ‘emergent design’ provide new ways for people to participate in the design process,  and challenge some of our traditional models of design.

The paper Dissolving boundaries: social technologies and participation in design [Preprint_Pdf] being presented at OZCHI this November is an attempt to provide a ‘lay of the land’.  We look at key trends and opportunities for supporting participation in design from across industry and research and point to some of questions about roles and responsibilities they raise for design practitioners. The paper, and the proposed discussion at Interaction10 (submission pasted below for prosperity), are an attempt to promote and contribute to ongoing discussion on how these shifts are changing design practice.

The sketches (scribbles) in this post were fundamental for thinking through, conceptualising and communicating the various ways design is being reshaped, and for starting to think about models of participation. I recently also came across these (much more refined!) sketches that also visualise emerging co-creation and codesign models.

Discussion Proposal submitted to IXD10.

Design in the wild: the practitioners new playground

Design is moving into the wild, propelled in part by the participatory nature of social technologies. Trends such as ‘open design’ which supports mass participation in the design process, ‘crowdsourcing’ of design ideas and skills from the public, ‘design after design’ or ‘design in use’ where design is iterated post-release and ‘emergent design’ where seed prototypes are shaped through use, challenge some of our traditional models of design.

In this shifting design landscape boundaries between design and use, and designer and user begin to blur. Not for the first time, but for the first time on this scale, design is moving out of the studio and taking place in more public forums. These shifts in design practice and process are generating questions about roles, responsibilities and appropriate frameworks for participation and decision-making.

In this session we’ll sketch out some of the challenges and opportunities currently facing us as practitioners. The discussion will be framed around the following topics:

- The suitability of existing methods to cater to this emerging design space
- The directions of emerging methods
- Potential frameworks for supporting participation and decision-making
- The impact these changes are having to our roles, responsibilities and skill-sets as design practitioners.

This session will be an opportunity for practitioners to share their ideas, concerns and thoughts, as well as explore what shifts are already happening, or may be necessary, to support these emerging forms of participation and collaboration in design.

References

1. Lee, Y., ‘Design participation tactics: the challenges and new roles for designers in the co-design process’, CoDesign, vol. 4, no. 1, (2008) pp. 31 – 50.

“social software is about a movement, not simply a category of technologies… it’s certainly not complete and as a category, it’s difficult to make sense of its boundaries.” (boyd 2007b)

Like the quote by boyd above suggests, I prefer a looser definition. I see social technologies…social media…social software, whatever you want to call it, to be about both tools and practices. This makes it inherent messy and difficult to capture and describe.

According to boyd (2007a) the phenomenon of social technologies can be characterised by greater social participation in mediated contexts (boyd 2007a). Terms like user generated content, crowdsourcing and citizen media all refer to emerging forms of social participation supported by social technologies. These activities are made possible thanks to the ease with which we can now connect, communicate, produce, share, replicate, locate and distribute information. These new capabilities have had, and continue to have, a profound impact on our social, cultural and technological practices (boyd 2009; Shirky 2008). This transformation has been made possible by the wide availability and accessibility of technology. Most importantly this has included the shift in technology ownership from organisations and companies, to everyday people (Battarbee 2003; Shirky 2008).

Another definition of social media, this time provided by the Finnish research institute VTT, refers to social media as both a set of tools and a modus operandi (Heinonen & Halonen 2007). This definition also re-enforces the dual emphasis on technologies and social practices. For me the terms social technologies, social software, social media, and at times Web 2.0 can all  be used interchangeably. That there are so many different acceptable terms also emphasises the legitimate variations, definitions and potential for interpretation that exists.

In my own work I use the term social technologies because it makes clear reference to the socio-technical  nature of the phenomenon which we are attempting to describe. In addition, it can encompass combinations of mobile and/or online technologies, potentially indicating something broader than a single piece of software. This framing or definition is deliberately vague in order to indicate the inadequacy of any single term to describe its complexity and fluidity.

For designers, social technologies become a tool with which we design, the subject of our design and the context within which we design. It’s messy and it’s disruptive. Hence, I guess, the stumped silence at #SMCSyd #1.

References

Battarbee, K.:(2003) Co-experience: the social user experience. CHI. ACM, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

boyd, d.:(2009) Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics Information Management and Systems, Vol. PhD. University of California, Berkeley

boyd, d.: (2007a) Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? :

boyd, d.: (2007b) The Significance of Social Software. In: Schmidt, T.N.B.a.J. (ed.): BlogTalks Reloaded: Social Software Research & Cases Norderstedt  15-30 2.

Heinonen, S., Halonen, M.: (2007) Making Sense of Social Media Interviews and Narratives In: 2, S.F.R. (ed.

Shirky, C.: (2008) Here comes everybody. Penguin Press

Methods can be a bit like a black box. Embedded within them are particular assumptions about design and participation that can be unwittingly projected into our design process and outcomes. If we hope to privilege sociability, flexibility and openness in our designs, these values can be better supported through some tools and techniques more than others. In my thesis I have drawn attention to particular qualities and concepts relevant to design in the context of social technologies. I’m in the process of making these available to others in different ways such as maps, vocabularies and considerations.

mapping goals, experiences, enablers and qualities in early design research

Design tools like concept maps and sketches  allow us to analyse and visualise things in different ways. In this context they can make visible important, though often implicit, aspects of methods. The (draft) map above describes the use of social technologies as a self-reporting/live prototyping tool in early design research. It takes into account goals of the design method, experiences that are of value in this context and qualities of the tools and technique that become enablers for these experiences. By mapping a relationship between design goals, qualities and enablers (methods) the intention is to make more visible connections between the tools, techniques and the values they embody.

The first two goals, immersion and intervention, take into account the perspective and experiences of the designer and participant. The third goal, seeding, represents the relationship between them, and between design and use. The qualities of digital self-reporting e.g over-time, in situ, visually rich, personal, mobile and so on enable the kinds of experiences (e.g reflection, inspiration) that support these desired goals.

The map is not meant to be prescriptive or exhaustive. Rather it is meant as a tool for encouraging discussion, reflection and decision-making. The map and its explanation are still very much works in progress.

Immersion, intervention and seeding are three key concepts that have emerged out of my work on participatory and designerly design methods that name things important (but at times implicit) to our practice^.

^ Designerly methods embody the creative, visual and exploratory nature of design, while participatory methods embody a commitment to active participation by users in design.

References: (A full literature review a reference list can be provided, in the mean time here are some selected key texts that have been instrumental in my work).
1.    Robertson, T.: Ethical Issues in Interaction Design. Ethics and Information Technology 8 (2006)
2.    Visser, F.S., Stappers, P.J., Lugt, R.V.D., Sanders, E.B.-N.: Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign 1 (2005) 119-140
3.    Visser, F.S., Lugt, R.v.d., Stappers, P.J.: Sharing User Experiences in the Product Innovation Process: Participatory Design Needs Participatory Communication. Creativity and Innovation Management 16 (2007) 35-45
4.    Botero, A., Kommonen, K.-H., Oilinki, I., Koskijoki, M.: Codesigning Visions, Uses, and Applications. TechnE Design Wisdom” 5th European Academy of Design Conference, Barcelona (2003)
5.    Botero, A., Saad-Sulonen, J.: Co-designing for new city-citizen interaction possibilities: weaving prototypes and interventions in the design and development of Urban Mediator. PDC’09. ACM, Bloomington, USA (2008)
6.    Hulkko., S., Mattelmäki, T., Virtanen, K., Keinonen, T.: Mobile Probes. NORDICHI 04, Tampere, Finland (2004)
7.    Gaver, B., Boucher, A., Pennington, S., Walker, B.: Subjective Design for Everyday Life. CHI 2003 (2003)
8.    Merkel, C.B., Xiao, L., Farooq, U., Ganoe, C.H., Lee, R., Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B.: Participatory Design in Community Computing Contexts: Tales from the Field PDC’04. ACM, Toronto, Canada (2004)
9.    Kensing, F., Blomberg, J.: Participatory Design: Issues and Concerns. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 7 (1998) 167-185
10.    Näkki, P., Antikainen, M., Virtanen, T.: Participatory Design in an Open Web Laboratory Owela CHI08. ACM, Florence, Italy (2008)
11.    Stolterman, E.: The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research. International Journal of Design 2 (2008)
12.    Dourish, P.: Where the Action Is. MIT Press (2001)

Emerging a User Experience Strategy: people, pencils and post-its is the title of the presentation @michellegilmore and I will be giving at UX Australia at the end of August. The conference is happening for the first time this year and there is an excellent range of speakers. The event will be a much appreciated addition to Australia’s calendar of UX and HCI events. A brief outline of our presentation is provided below based on our submission.

Michelle and I will be talking about the process of emerging a User Experience Strategy (or getting from fluffy to something). The approach we’ll be sharing emphasises collaborative and light-weight design methods (people, pencils and post-its). Drawing on a recent case study we’ll highlight experiences and techniques evolved over a number of projects and influenced by IxD and agile development methods.

The motivation for the presentation is a desire to capture, describe and make available for discussion aspects of the re-framing and translating that takes place as part of the process of developing a project-level User Experience Strategy.  Early project information and documentation often takes an organisational or technical perspective in describing the future system. A UX strategy on the other hand takes as its start point the perspective of those who will use the system. For the purposes of this presentation we define the development of a UX strategy as the process through which project information (e.g scope, project objectives, business requirements, user research, content analysis, comparative analysis, brand information) are critically translated and interpreted into a description of the future system from the perspective of the user experience.

The outcome is an agreement in principle to the objectives, the opportunities, the constraints, the scope (scale) and key principles of the design. It privileges the intended user experience whilst appropriately taking into account the various interests of the project such as business, brand, content and technology.

In the approach we’ll be sharing, the process starts by taking existing project information and translating it into relevant user stories. User stories are valuable for a number of reasons. They are versatile and accessible to all stakeholders. They become a common form of language across the design and client team and they can be prioritised as a way of making design decisions in relation to the user experience.

In our process groups of user stories are used to expose themes and activities that provide an initial (loose) structure. Prioritised user stories are then formed into key scenarios and  mapped out to expose the core user pathways, which are then iteratively refined. The structure of the system is allowed to emerge through this process of mapping the user experience and priorities for content and functionality fall out along the way. This can be challenging for members of the design team otherwise used to defining such aspects upfront (or top-down). Similarly various methods are needed to promote collaboration, trust and visibility of project process to the client throughout the process.

In our presentation we’ll be highlighting:

• How user stories are generated and then themed
• The process of prioritising user stories with clients to identify key complex scenarios
• How we collaboratively map the priority scenarios out and expose the core user pathways
• How these processes inform information architecture and user interface designs and
• Our choice of rapid and collaborative tools (e.g post – its, and pencils)
• Communicating the process to the client

The work upon which this presentation draws was completed on behalf of Digital Eskimo, a social design agency in Sydney whose Considered Design methodology makes embracing these methods and approaches possible. Our wonderful client was UNSW and we worked with other great team members from Zumio and Redrollers. Our presentation wouldn’t be possible without their generous committment to sharing the design experience and process, a big thank you to them and to the generous participants that gave their time to this project  (still in production).

‘Seeding’ refers to activities which enable or encourage the transfer of ownership from the designer to the user, and points to the moments in which which abstract design space engages with or shifts into concrete use space (for more info on these terms see references in this post)

Social technologies for prototyping

The term ’seeding’ can be used to refer to a range of activities but the approach that I am most interested in currently makes use of existing social technologies such as blogs and mobile phones as prototyping tools.  Social technologies are rapidly being adapted into the repertoire of design researchers, Mobile Diaries (Digital Eskimo), Digital Etho (Cheskin, News Digital Media) and Digital Diaries (Frog) are all examples of  designers exploiting the mobile, digital and connected nature of these tools for early design research. However, it’s possible to move beyond the boundaries implied by “research”, and get straight into design. An example of this is the patchwork prototyping being done by Jones et al. [1]. In these projects existing technologies are configured as prototypes and deployed into the community. The tools themselves become the material through which early design exploration and research occurs, and potential uses emerge. A snip from Jones et al. in Handbook of Research on Open Source Software on Patchwork Prototyping:

the combining of open source software applications to rapidly create a rudimentary but fully functional prototype that can be used and hence evaluated in real life situations. The use of a working prototype enables the capture of more realistic and informed requirements than traditional methods that rely on users trying to imagine how they might use the envisaged system in their work, and even more problematic, how that system in use may change how they work. [1]

While this particular quote perhaps doesn’t capture the openness, flexibility and participatory nature of the process, the potential is there. Other researchers also using these kinds of online tools for early, participatory co-design are Owela (at VTT in Finland see also [2-5]) and Arki (Media Lab in Finland see also [6, 7]).

Design ‘in the wild’

There is a growing sense that some of our traditional UCD methods – that rely in large part testing during the “design phase” – prior to release – fall short in the context of social technologies that require participation and contribution by people to take their form e.g .[8].  Many development companies have been adopting a beta approach (or even perpetual beta) in part in response to this issue where the emphasis is ‘getting stuff out there’ in order to gain feedback (discussed in [9-11]). As part of this (and other changes to traditional design practices) design practitioners, UX in particular, are  finding ways to integrate with agile development processes. While I think there are a heap of positives about this, I see prototyping “in the wild” [12] as another exciting, design driven approach where seeding becomes a central design activity.

This was a very quick and oversimplified overview of some pretty complex shifts in practice, and I hope to provide a fuller account of these emerging  approaches and their relationship to our concepts of design and use in a different forum, for further references that tackle the issue of co-design and PD ‘in the wild’ see also [13-18]:[19, 20]

Reading/References

1.    Jones, M.C., Floyd, I.R., Twidale, M.B.: Patchwork Prototyping with Open Source Software. In: St.Amant, K., Still, B. (eds.): Handbook of Research on Open Source Software: Technological, Economic, and Social Perspectives. Information Science Reference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (2007) 126-140
2.    Näkki, P., Antikainen, M., Virtanen, T.: Participatory Design in an Open Web Laboratory Owela CHI08. ACM, Florence, Italy (2008)
3.    Näkki, P.: Owela: Open Web Laboratory for Innovation and Design. ERCIM News Vol. 2009 (2008)
4.    Owela. Vol. 2009
5.    Näkki, P., Antikainen, M.: Online Tools for Co-design: User Involvement through the Innovation Process. In: Karahasanović, A., Følstad, A. (eds.): NordiCHI 2008 workshops: Requirements Elicitation & HCI and Social Media Development Lund, Sweden (2008)
6.    Botero, A., Kommonen, K.-H., Oilinki, I., Koskijoki, M.: Codesigning Visions, Uses, and Applications. TechnE Design Wisdom” 5th European Academy of Design Conference, Barcelona (2003)
7.    Botero, A., Saad-Sulonen, J.: Co-designing for new city-citizen interaction possibilities: weaving prototypes and interventions in the design and development of Urban Mediator. PDC’09. ACM, Bloomington, USA (2008)
8.    Isbister, K., Höök, K.: On being supple: in search of rigor without rigidity in meeting new design and evaluation challenges for HCI practitioners. Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, Boston, MA, USA (2009)
9.    Merholz, P.: Embrace the chaos – designers and systems with emergent behavior. Vol. 2008 (2006) <http://www.peterme.com/archives/000793.html
http://www.peterme.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/499>
10.    Porter, J.: The Freedom of Fast Iterations: How Netflix Designs a Winning Web Site. Vol. 2008 (2006) <http://www.uie.com/articles/fast_iterations/>.
11.    Holzapfel, N.: An unsuitable match: social media and User-Centred design. Johnny Holland (2008) http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2008/11/an-unsuitable-match-social-media-and-user-centred-design/
12.    Hutchins, E.: Cognition in the Wild. MIT (1995)
13.    Battarbee, K., Cabrera, A.B., Mattelmäki, T., Rizzo, F.: Designed for Co-designers: Workshop Call for Participation. PDC 2008 (2008)
14.    Brereton, M., Buur, J.: New challenges for design participation in the era of ubiquitous computing. CoDesign 4 (2008) 101 – 113
15.    Rehead, F., Brereton, M.: Getting to the Nub of Neighbourhood Interaction. PDC’08. ACM, Bloomington, USA (2008)
16.    Cabrera, A.B.: Emerging Digital Practices of Communities In: käytännot, A.A.d. (ed.):  (2006)
17.    Karasti, H., Syrjänen, A.-L.: Artful Infrastructuring in Two Cases of Community PD Participatory Design Conference. ACM, Toronto, Canada (2004)
18.    Dittrich, Y., EriksénII, S., HanssonI, C.: PD in the Wild; Evolving Practices of Design in Use Participatory Design. CPSR, Malmö, Sweden, (2002)
19.    Merkel, C.B., Xiao, L., Farooq, U., Ganoe, C.H., Lee, R., Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B.: Participatory Design in Community Computing Contexts: Tales from the Field
. Participatory Design Conference. ACM, Toronto, Canada (2004)
20.    Merkel, C., Farooq, U., Xiao, L., Ganoe, C., Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M.: Managing technology use and learning in nonprofit community organizations: methodological challenges and opportunities. Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Computer human interaction for the management of information technology. ACM, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007)

I had the pleasure of attending Ozchi earlier this month presenting at Ozchi. It was a great conference, perhaps more relaxed than some years which I attribute to the temperature in Cairns.

My presentation focused on a reflection into changes in our role as designers, in light of social technologies. In particular I focused on the role of seeding as a design activity in forging a connection between a design project or concept, and the possible “user community” that it might target [[download pdf]]. Seeding describes an aspect of our design process or responsibility that exists in addition to (or perhaps instead of) the actions of constructing and crafting that we might have emphasised in earlier design mediums. The presentation seemed to be well received, though was of rather a different focus than the heavy heuristics analysis that went before it (good, but a very different tangent on design reflections).

Closer to my field was the talk that follow me by Mads Bødker who explored how the different generative design tools that we might provide our user’s in workshop sessions influences how they are able to articulate their thoughts and ideas. Of course the materials and objects we use impact the way people communicate, and it will be great to have some research that goes some way to indicating how some approaches and materials in this area of methods privilege or enable certain aspects over others.

It was a privilege to keynote at last weeks Making Links (or was it the week before already).

As a natural born cynic I need to regularly surround myself in people who do amazing things for humanity to keep my spirit charged (sorry to be such taker on that front , and it was indeed an inspirational couple of days seeing the great projects presented there. I also really benefited from the questions and feedback from those in the audience, many of whom are dealing with complex issues such as supporting transgender teens, protecting sex workers from abuse, and outreach to those at risk of HIV.

The crux of my own presentation was about plotting a presence in the now very distributed digital ecology in which we now can exist, that is appropriate to those whom you are trying to reach. So, rather than thinking in terms of the one stop shop corporate or organisational website, focusing on connecting with communities at their level, in ways meaningful for them. For many organisations then there are opportunities in facebook and myspace, or twitter and other public forums for intersecting and connecting with members of their community around shared interests. However organisations that focus on issues such as those mentioned above, have a very real need to engage in private and anonymous communications with their audiences. So while much of the conversation about social media currently about the place (including my own) is focused on getting your message out their and leveraging these networks to position, dissmenate and amplify your message, we should also take note of other ways in which social technologies can support social change.

For example young people dont necessarily want to friend the Freedom Centre and broadcast to their friends (and possibly family) that they are gay or transgender. Similarly people who are at risk of HIV are sensitive to being identified. But (as was seen through the presentations) technologies such as MSN, and anonymous comments and messaging on websites opens up the possibilities of communicating with these audiences in ways not possible in traditional outreach campaigns. Similarly the enormous opportunity to connect with, and provide support for a remote or iterinant communities through mobile phones was also made visible. For example the Youth Connected presentation talked about the dramatic increase in positive relationships and success stories made possible throught their programm of giving troubled youth and street kids their mobile phones. A lunchtime conversation with another attendee focused on the possibilities for keeping in touch with sex workers via mobile phones, and in particular enabling them to report and register abuses more easily.

It was great to have the opportunity to share such thoughts and experiences with people doing important but often uncelebrated work well outside the mainstream marketing and business focused conversations on social media use.