A constructive approach for design space exploration

Abstract

The co-evolution of different kinds of external representations is essential in Human-Centered Design. It helps design teams to interleave different design activities and to view a design problem from different perspectives. The paper investigates a coupling of representations for Design Rationale, formal HCI models, and prototypical implementations for a more effective co-exploration of problem and design spaces with both analytical and empirical means. Deliberated underdesign and parallel, model-guided prototyping are proposed techniques to systematically integrate exploratory design steps into evolutionary prototyping. The general approach is instantiated with QOC diagrams, HOPS models, and Java implementations. HOPS models are used for two purposes: to create 'throw-away extensions' of an existing prototype and to specify design goals and constraints. The animation tool allows designers to explore and to reflect the model-guided prototypes. A case study demonstrates the applicability of the approach. Implications for related design practices are discussed.

Coping with Design Complexity: A Conceptual Framework for Design Alternatives and Variants

“…Flexible design processes need to be supported by a coevolution of the various design representations. Although there are approaches to relate different types of representations such as user interface sketches and formal specifications [5], task models and QOC-diagrams [22], or prototyping and argumentation [12], the effective coupling of different external representations is still poorly understood in interaction design. What we especially consider in our framework is the designers' ability to compare representations and understand how they are related and whether or not they satisfy some initial or evolving requirements and constraints.…”

A semi-formal framework for describing interaction design spaces

“…One way to increase each others' receptivity is to develop methods that 'couple' models and representations from different approaches such as task models and UI models in model-based de-sign [6,24] or formal modeling and prototyping [9]. However, the co-evolution of different types of design representations that is essential to interleave the activities of heterogeneous design sub-teams in an effective way is still poorly understood [10]. In this paper, we use a relaxed version of refinement to relate design representations and to support the idea of design as a goal-directed activity in the sense that however intangible a design process might be there always emerges a set of requirements which is expressed in some way and must be satisfied.…”