smallfire: design strategy, research & methods to support participation

Archived entries for social design

Mapping methods, techniques, tools and design values

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, qualities

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

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Emerging a User Experience Strategy: people, pencils and post-its

user stories workshop

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. Continue reading…

Seeding: prototyping ‘in the wild’

Over the last few years I’ve experienced a real change in the kinds of design services that might be needed by, or offered to, clients – especially working in the not for profit and community sectors. As we all know, more and more organisations are beginning to see the potential for social technologies to engage with new audiences, or engage with their audience in new ways.  In such cases the design work can become more about re-configuration of existing technologies than creating something from scratch. Design-time is often spent on developing strategies for extending a client’s online presence through existing platforms, tools and channels. While we may be moving away from an emphasis on actual building and designing pixels in this version of design practice, our responsibility to successfully seed participation and engagement is growing.

seed image

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