Tools to REPRESENT / EXPLORE information
Showcase: Product Sound Design
Abstract
This tool makes use of a sound library that contains a collection of separately recorded parts of products. The sounds in the library are hierarchically organized and each of which is represented by a corresponding pictogram that makes it easy for designers to navigate, choose, and build the right sound. The pictograms represent various descriptive features of the sounding parts (e.g., source, action, material, etc.) and work as a cue for the represented sound. Designers can also manipulate the sounds used from the library depending on the desired aspects of product sound quality. Showcase: RealPeople
Abstract
The resource that is being developed allows designers to specify a user group byselecting certain variables e.g. age, gender and product type, and view statistically
validated information concerning particular groups’ generic attitudes towards
products and the types of pleasure they bring the user. It is also possible to browse individual’s data, where there is richer and more in-depth information
about favourite products and lifestyle, including video clips. This provides a more intimate portrait of different market segments.
Tools in this category
AffectVisualisation
AffectVisualisation is an excel based program that performs statistical analysis and creates graphical displays to make interpretation a more intuitive and interactive task.
Archetypes
Archetype discoveries involve the discovery of a people’s core issues (or archetypes) in relation to a particular product or service. Archetypes consist of attitudes, behaviours and motivations which are the emotional and biological sources of human reasoning. These have been shown to be rooted in culture and change very slowly over many years.
Bodystorming
Through physical action and acting out an idea using role-play, ideas and concepts can be tested more quickly. How the members from the design team or recruited participants react to scenarios can be noted, for example, how they behave, what intuitive actions they made or how they felt. Furthermore, the acting out of different situations can provide instant ergonomic and phsychological comfort information.
Cabinet
The divide between the physical and digital collections is bridged by on one hand enabling easy capturing of physical material and on the other hand offering a direct physical interaction with the digital collection. No words are needed in the interaction with both collections.
Design Improv
Design Improv is a process that has been designed specifically for Interaction Design. It can be done not just by designers and makes everyone feel part of the process. It gives everyone in the design process a common platform on which to work together to solve the complex problems that we encounter when designing interactions.
Extreme Characters
Designing for extreme characters is a method which tries to steer away from the usual designing for a prototypical character from a target group. In fact, it takes the opposite approach. Instead of designing for characters that are emotionally shallow, we design for characters that have exaggerated emotional attitudes. By taking characters that are extremes, character traits can be exposed which, though common, remain hidden because they are antisocial or in conflict with a person’s status.
ISH & E2
We believe that reflection-in-action and on-action can be attained through loops of designing, building and testing products with an experiential quality. The reflection on what is done by the designer and user during interaction, will constitute design knowledge and generate new hypothesis. Interactive installations can be used to explore, experience, test, reflect upon and alter interaction concepts on the spot. We developed E2, a social and tangible interaction playground, to support designer-researchers to design for and study interaction, test their ideas and reflect upon their and users’ actions. E2 runs several applications and projects, of which ISH is one.
MDS-Interactive
MDS-Interactive allows users to explore a solution space by allowing the user to manipulate sets of samples, and visualising their relations based on hidden data in the database. The dialogue is mostly visually structured, appealing to experience and associative thinking; users can modify the set of examples and the criteria under consideration, and search for new samples based on (dis)similarity. The interaction procedure is described in Figure 2.
Mood matrix
Mood Matrix is a method to define the three major emotions a given product is supposed to evoke in the user. The emotional character of the product is represented in a collage of emotion related pictures.
Personas
Personas is a tool that can bring to life key users of a product or service that designers and the whole development team (i.e. marketers, sales, management) can focus on. A persona is a ficticious character that is easier to design for and empathise with than dry lists of facts and figures.
Product Sound Design
This tool has a product sound library representing the sound producing parts of domestic products (e.g., engines, fans, switches, etc). A designer can choose the relevant sounding components of the product in development and create the desired sound. Sound manipulation is also a part of the tool and based on the perceptual attributes of product sounds instead of acoustical attributes.
RealPeople
RealPeople is a DVD based ‘resource’ for designers; it is designed to inspire and inform the designer in the early stages of the design process; highlighting the key ‘pleasure’ needs of the target market and promoting greater empathy with the user.
Repertory Grid Technique (RGT)
The Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) is an open and dynamic technique for eliciting people’s experiences and meanings in relation to technological artifacts, while it at the same time providing for modern methods of statistical analysis. The RGT is best understood as a technique on the border between qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Scenario building
Scenario building is a tool which facilitates the visualisation of people’s experiences and can aid illustration, evaluation and the design of concepts early in a design process. Scenario building provides designers, and other stakeholders, with a range of characters (and their context) that may use the product or service or who could be affected by the topic they are working on.
Skin 2.0
We provide a simple but powerful technique to explore material expression in the conceptual phase of the design process. Colours, textures and finishes are projected on foam, paper and rapid prototyped models to enable designers to quickly visualise and judge materials in context of the products shape and environment. Designs are easily captured with a digital camera. Typically the technique supports browsing a large amount of designs within a fraction of the time and costs of creating painted appearance models. Furthermore the technique supports collaboration between groups of designers, and enhances the communication between marketing, design and engineering.
[product & emotion] navigator
The tool aims to illustrate and exemplify the distinct patterns of eliciting conditions that evoke distinct emotions though a multitude of personal examples. By browsing through hundreds of examples, the user can get an impression of the processes that underlie product emotions. In that way, the tool can be used as a means for inspiration and discussion.
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