Mini-project 3: Participatory design

Goal

The goal of this project is to give you an experiential sense of how participatory design works, how to create elicitation strategies for it, and the kinds of surprises that it can turn up. This project will be done in groups of two.

Overview

The key attribute of participatory design is that intended users and designers work together to create a design which does justice to the complexity of the users’ actual practices. In this mini-project, you will practice this on a brief scale. You will form a team of two. One person will be designated “the designer”, the other “the user.” The team will develop an original elicitation technique, use it to investigate a practice of the user, and collaboratively sketch a technology design that is appropriate for that practice based on the insights that the elicitation techniques developed.

Good participatory design results in surprises - surprises to the designer about the nature of the activity to be designed for and what really matters in it, and surprises to the user with new realizations of what his or her activity is about and what it might be possible to create for it. For this project, you will document your design, describe how its features relate to details of user practice, and explain surprises that came up for you along the way.

Instructions

1. In the first section of Module 4 (10/22), we will form teams of two. In your team, decide who wants to be the ‘designer’ and who the ‘user.’ If you are not present in section on that day, you will need to find a friend who is willing to act as the ‘user’ for you (this does not need to be a person in this class). If your friend is not in 4240, you must play the ‘designer’ role while your friend is the ‘user.’
   • If you are working with another student in 4240, make sure to note the full name and the netID of your partner.
2. Identify an activity that the user regularly engages in for which you wish to design. The activity should be one about which the user feels s/he is an expert, and about which the designer knows little.
3. After interviewing the user briefly about the activity, develop a hands-on, creative elicitation technique tailored to that activity which you will use to develop specific insights into and concrete details about that activity. You should start by brainstorming several techniques before settling on and fleshing out your chosen technique.
   • The elicitation technique must support hands-on demonstration and explanation. Interviewing may be helpful to communicate background information but it does not count as a designed elicitation techniques. For example:
     • It may be helpful to set up a situation that will allow the user to physically act out the activity to demonstrate to the designer how it is done.
     • It may be helpful to design a structured role-play, for example to check understanding by having the designer pretend s/he is doing the activity and the user explaining when s/he has things wrong.
     • You might design a sketching activity to flesh out your discussion, for example by creating a collaborative comic strip that illustrates a key issue or aspect of the activity.
     • More ways will be covered in lecture and/or section.
   • Remember that:
     • Participatory design techniques are often physical, visual, and creative.
     • They focus on reducing as much as possible the power differential between the designer and the person designed for.
     • They should be specifically tailored to address the nuances of the task at hand.
4. By the lecture on 10/28, execute the elicitation technique you developed as part of a participatory design session. This process should take about 30 minutes but could take a bit longer if you are in the groove. Your goal here should be to collaboratively elicit as much detail as possible. You should both take notes to document your process and capture details of the activity that seem important, and note surprises that come up along the course of discussion. It might be helpful to take photographs of stages in the design process for your own notes or to include in your submission.
5. Develop your design, by doing the following:
   1. Review the results of the discussion so far. What is striking or surprising about the activity, for the designer or for the now-sensitized user? What mismatches seem to exist between currently existing technology and what your user actually does?
   2. Using paper, markers, or other supplies, collaboratively develop a concept prototype for a technology that would contribute positively to this activity. Make sure both parties agree that this would be a desirable technology.
   3. Annotate the technology design with descriptions of how the design responds to specific details of the user’s activity that came up in earlier discussions.We will provide time in our lecture slot on 10/28 to develop your project design, and on 10/29 to further understand PD.
6. After elicitation and design, each participant will write up his or her own brief experience report. This report will contain the following components:
   1. Your role in the process (user or designer).
   2. Your partner’s full name.
   3. (200 words, with optional images) A detailed description of the elicitation technique you designed for the project.
   4. (400 words, with optional images) A description of how your technique worked out in practice, and what you learned about the user’s activity you are designing for through it.
   5. (100-200 words) A description of the nature of any surprises that came up for you during the course of design and what you learned from them. Hint: if there were no surprises, you probably did something wrong.
   6. (700 words) A reflection explaining how and to what degree your team instantiated participatory design with specific references to the reading and class notes.

To aid you in getting the miniproject done with minimal pain, we will devote section on 10/22 to starting to develop your elicitation technique, and the lecture slot on 10/28 to creating the resulting design and taking notes towards your individual project report. Finally, we will give you further taining on how to transition from elicitation to design in section on 10/29. You will profit the most from this set up if you deploy the elicitation techniques prior to lecture on 10/28.

Submission

Deliverables:

1. A photograph of your annotated technology sketch (i.e. the designed prototype, with annotations stating clearly how each design feature relates to a specific thing that you learned through your elicitation process). This submission is the same for both partners on your team and only needs to be submitted by one of you. Make sure you agree on who is submitting it!
2. Your individual experience report, as detailed above. Each student will need to submit their report separately. If you are working with a user outside of this class, they do not need to submit a report.

Your project is due electronically via submission to Canvas by 11:59pm on Wednesday, Nov. 3. Your submissions must be in .pdf format (you can print your design image to pdf to produce this).