1.5 User Behaviors / Mental Models

FEB1/ Mapping visually to understand behaviors/ What moves people? After going to the field we define some aspects, behaviors and activities that are relevant. The teams do a brainstorm session to put down and associate some of these ideas. We use to “anchor” words: DRIVERS (emotional + functional) and TRANSGENERATIONAL DESIGN. After commenting everyone’s appreciation and thoughts over these two topics, the designers organize the information in affinity diagrams. By mapping their ideas out, they find a particular scope to narrow down the following field explorations. 

1.4 Approaching the end-user/ Field research 1

JAN 29/ Towards opportunity detection-areas for intervention After testing the protocols, the teams go doing field research using them. A basic applied research toolbox will help us to design and imagine new research methods or ways to raise information. We aim to have a participative spirit in them; yet, now we are in an exploratory phase, so the applications are open-ended. In applying the tools for interviewing and observing, the teams should accomplish objectives defined by them. Interviews were done in an exploratory fashion. Warm up questions were identified as critical to gain the trust of the interviewees. For the moment, the relationship with the people is being built, so some of the teams were allowed to go in the people’s houses. Some could be toured, discovering and registering gadgets and personal stories that had to do with them. Some realized that they needed to produce better protocols or adjust the ones they had to the needs and ideas that aroused in meeting the participants. Matters like discrimination, technology, communication, physical boundaries, emotional aspects, being part of the community appeared to be relevant to the people at Parkview Manor.

Danny Stillion: [lecture NCState] Interaction Design at IDEO

Danny Stillion, an alumni of NC State, returned to the College of Design to give a lecture on topics compelling: interaction, design and projects at IDEO.
“Danny is a design director and associate partner at IDEO. With a background in fine art, visual communication and product design, Danny was drawn to the field of interaction design through his early interests in communication design and time-based media and an interest in how we physically interact with products and services. Prior to joining IDEO, Danny taught interactive media courses in higher education and consulted as an interaction designer. Today he continues to mentor and learn from other design colleagues in the context of active projects that span telecommunications, medical, service design, consumer products, and vehicle telematics domains” (http://www.ideo.com/thinking/voice/danny-stillion/).

LATEST INTERACTION DESIGN PROJECTS AT IDEO

Over the projects he reviewed were various related with the health area. Transcutaneous immunization delivery method for Intercell is an application method for a needle-free vaccine delivery patch. The Bayer Contour USB is a portable blood-glucose meter and test strips, which plugs directly in the computer (using the simple USB technology) to launch software for managing diabetes. One of the most interesting to me was the Nurse knowledge exchange for Kaiser Permanente. Why? The component of interaction in this particular project has more to do with experience and an interdisciplinary background, than the design of the device itself. Doctors can corroborate this: nurse shift changes in medical environments are crucial for the continuity of a patient’s care. The research (very qualitative) done is well described in the case and it is evident when we see the success of the solution implemented. So development of better health practices is made within the hospital environment. Key issues to be designed [what we may call key touch points]: schedules, software, information hand-offs, and patient interactions. The social components of these interaction projects are huge.
Other projects that he talked about relate with the diverse touch points of the brand being designed from an interaction point of view. PNC Bank Virtual Wallet interactive banking experience , Join BugLabs & IDEO’s Open Project , Ford Motor Company Hybrid Electric Vehicle Dashboard Interaction , Emotive Epoc Headset , Western Digital My Book

DESIGN SHIFTS
On the conversation with the panel composed by Meredith Davis, Santiago Piedrafita and three students at NC State, various topics were touched. How design is shifting from products to services. How exploring with business partners can a big difference when addressing innovation. Stillion highlighted the idea that working with big partners gave them the platform helps them to explore and affect in greater ways. “When you make a project with partners like Walmart, you can do a small thing and make a big difference”. Danny mentioned that in the IDEO organizational culture, they work with T shaped people: individuals that have a strong preparation in something but can or are prepared to cross with others. There is a strong component of empathy in the IDEO teams, “You have empathy in learning what the people at your side are doing”. One of the students in the audience asked: “If you have an interdisciplinary team with graphic, interaction and industrial designers… who goes first in solving a project?” Stillion explained “We all go first! From day one we are all working together”. The idea that the business partner is also integrated in this team is relevant for the designers.

“WHEN THEY SHOWED THE IPAD, THEY DIDN’T SHOW THE BACK”
Amber Howard, PhD Student at NC State asks about mobile opportunities. Danny comments that they ask themselves how to make the business offering really mobile. Not just having the APP or the link to the APP store added. “So we ask ourselves, how do we change the offer from just talking about the vehicle [the car] to the mobile opportunities, that is giving the option to know about the transportation, tourist destinations, etc. Really offering a system”.  On the other hand Danny Stillion was very emphatic in the usage of prototyping as a tool for thought: “It’s in our DNA to prototype, we try to do it in the market, to go BETA, we prototype in a small scale”. There has been a paradigm shift, Stillion remarked, in the focus on how people experience products instead of looking to the “style” of form of the products. “When they showed the IPAD they didn’t show the back”. So it is not about the product features, but about the physical touchpoints.

LOOK TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Commenting about the opportunities for innovation, he told the design community that they look a lot to developing countries for the “what” they do with basic instruments. A lot of this has to do with the work they do in India.

Check on the students’ blogs!

2010-Design for Social Innovation interdisciplinary studio/ Student’s will maintain a blog so you can follow up their particular processes and pictures. Check on the links on the side of the blog. [example:Sam Cox & Rebecca Myer's]

1.3 Approaching the end user: BETA protocols

1.3 JAN25/ Beta approach to end user and protocol design We want to design with the people not just for the people, so we need to know their expectatins, goals, needs and ideas. It is absolutely important to go to the field with a plan. Not a static plan, but an organic one that might adapt to the researcher’s needs. It is not enough just to acknowledge the tools to work with, but to know whom we are working with, in what conditions and what we want to get from this experience. So a “roadmap” should be made before making any moves. This is a research protocol. Also it is a good thing to test it. This, in allusion to Google’s concept, I’ve called it a Beta Protocol. By testing it in real contexts, it is easier to make changes before getting to the real situation. We use and modify Eric Dishman’s [http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/edishman.htm] the Ask, Perform, and Observe protocol. Yet, with some typical recommendations in anthropological research [Schensul, Jean J., and Margaret Diane LeCompte, 1999 Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: AltaMira Press].  A basic research toolbox will help us to design and imagine new research methods or ways to elicit and collect information. They can be participative, and they should look to be designed accomplishing the objectives defined by the student.

The students made 1 to 1 in-context interviews to elder people from around Raleigh. Interviews are particularly useful for this EXPLORATORY PHASE. Researchers designed charts and other graphic supporting material to collect the information in an organized and thoughtful fashion. This material is the one subjected to change. We won’t  just modify the protocol itself, but also the worksheets used for the researcher’s data collection. There is also designed material to write reflective insights post-interview. This is used when team meets to check out the audiovisual material. Students did modify the typeface for the informed consent forms to enhance the readability of the participants. They also changed some approaches to questions and ways to download the information. The team profits from the information interchange that takes place within the class. Rebecca Myers and Sam Cox did revise once and again their protocols, going into the field and revising the processes and the material after. They were very successful with their insights.