Developing Usage Guidelines for a Card-Based Design Tool

Abstract

Background Card-based design tools have gained popularity as a means to communicate research insights and to make them usable in a design process. There are various examples of card tools and guidelines for developing a card set itself, yet there has been little research into how the usage of card tools can be systematically formulated. Although the existing literature on card tools often presents certain usages, it rarely explicates how the usage was structured, and provides few references to the underlying decisions. MethodsThrough a case study of the positive emotional granularity cards, this paper presents a bottom-up approach in which designers' needs and their own techniques to use the cards are reflected in formulating new card usage guidelines. Three design workshops were conducted, each of which explored how designers made use of the cards in the three design activities respectively: (1) assimilating nuances of positive emotions; (2) specifying emotional intentions; and (3) generating product ideas. In a creative session with design researchers, the workshop findings were translated into usage guidelines. ResultsThere were individual differences in designers' ability to make use of the PEG cards. At one end of the spectrum was the designer who immediately started to play and explore the cards, creating his or her own usage rules. At the other end of the spectrum was the designer who needed instructions to get started. Most designers explored usage, but at the same time they felt insecure about getting value without having some guidance. The workshops allowed us to spot the benefits and drawbacks of the techniques the designers used, and to identify their needs in using the PEG cards. The creative session resulted in the PEG card guidelines that assist and inspire designers in the three design activities.Conclusions Provisional usage guidelines can considerably contribute to a card tool's usefulness, even if the card usage is envisioned to be open-ended and versatile. The bottom-up approach proved valuable to generate new insights into how a card set can best be used and how designers can be guided when using the card set.

How professional designers use magic-based inspirations: development of a usage guideline and analysis of impact on design process

“…Here, a study of another card-based design tool indicated while there are designers who can immediately use the cards freely, there are also designers who needed instruction to get started, and most designers are something in between. They can explored usage by themselves but they felt unsure of their approaches without any guidances [37]. In order for most designers to use the tool efficiently, this paper aim to provide them a usage guideline based on the successful approaches carried by professional designers.…”

“…Lucero et al (2016) observed and reported how designers used three types of inspiration cards (PLEX, Inspiration Card, and Video Card Game) in workshops [25]. Yoon et al (2016) also conducted workshops and observed how designers used The ability to read minds or transmit information to another mind Extra-Sensory Perception The ability to perceive information without using physical senses e.g. X-ray vision, predictions Telekinesis…”

“…The mind controls the movement or deformation of an object their cards, then they created a usage guideline of how to properly use PEG cards [37]. Similarly, this paper aim to investigate the design approaches and strategies on the cards by professional designers and develop the guideline in order for the MiX cards to be used efficiently in real design practice.…”

“…Similarly, this paper aim to investigate the design approaches and strategies on the cards by professional designers and develop the guideline in order for the MiX cards to be used efficiently in real design practice. Since usage guideline is not less important than the cards tool itself [37], and designers with higher experiences are expected to have more stable design approach [2], and create quality design solutions [1,8].…”

“…To do this, our plan is not only to observe how the designers use the cards, but also to find the impact of the cards to the design process, and find the relations of the impact with creativity of ideas. Therefore, instead of an observation of designers ideation workshop like previous studies [25,37], we conducted an in-depth verbal protocol analysis of professional designers in thinkaloud design sessions, and analyzed their design process together with the evaluation of their ideas. To the extent of our knowledge, this is also the first time that verbal protocol analysis is implemented to explore the use of card-based design tools.…”