Exploration of facilitation, materials and group composition in participatory design sessions

Abstract

Motivation -To investigate how facilitation, material and group composition influence creativity in and outcomes of participatory design sessions.Research approach -Several participatory design workshops were held with end-users and designers. Different materials were used to trigger creativity. Analysis of effects of group facilitation, material and composition was based on observational notes, prototypes and interview data. Findings/Design -(1) Specific allocation of time for breaks and questions are useful. Examples or prototypes tied into the explanation of the domain and design challenge support the participants' understanding. (2) Paper prototypes are useful for non-designers to trigger creativity and allow for interaction between the group members while creating new prototypes. (3) Groups should be composed to contain a domain expert, designer and end-users as well as someone taking the role of a moderator leading the group work.Research limitations/Implications -We did not follow a strictly conditional experiment set-up with our sessions. For an in-depth and systematic analysis of influencing factors a rigid set-up is advised.Originality/Value -The research makes a contribution to an investigation of factors influencing the process and outcome of participatory design sessions.Take away message -To allow for creativity and collaboration, participatory design sessions need to be set-up with care. Summarizing, groups should be composed of endusers, designers, domain experts and have a designated moderator. Prototypes are useful in the briefing, and should be provided to each group as paper versions to be used in the creative process. The researcher has the crucial task of facilitating the session, allowing enough time for questions and breaks and adapt explanations to the knowledge of the participants.

Co-Designing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Environments: Unravelling the Situated Context of Informal Dementia Care

“…Codesign utilizes the “collective creativity of designers working together with nondesigners” and is well suited for early stages of the design process, where complex challenges and embodiments of imagined future user experiences can be explored [26]. Integral to this process was the use of “creativity triggers”—visual artefacts that explained the concept and capabilities of AAL, guided our questions, and facilitated participants' envisioning of the design space [27]. The first trigger was an animated video demonstrating an activity-assistance AAL system, “COACH” [28], which acted as a point of departure from which participants could envision, ideate, and design their interactions with similar AAL systems.…”

“…We developed an animated video based on the COACH system, which has demonstrated efficacy in guiding a PwD through an ADL (e.g., hand-washing) using context-aware prompts and learning from a specific user's behaviours to improve prompting over time [28]. This video was to serve as a creativity trigger [27] to familiarize participants with the capabilities of AAL and demonstrate how an AAL system might assist a PwD who requires prompts and cues to complete an activity. As shown in Figure 2, the video depicts an older man (PwD) washing his hands in the bathroom with successive audio, picture, and video prompts from COACH, delivered only as needed, if the man experiences difficulty progressing to the next correct step of hand-washing.…”

Development of a Gesture-Based Game Applying Participatory Design to Reflect Values of Manual Wheelchair Users

“…We conducted five sessions of participatory design. According to previous studies, we time-marked our sessions to 60 minutes [30]. This time limit aims to avoid fatigue and the pressure under the participants and keep their focus.…”

“…As supporting materials for the creative stimulus of the participants, we provided paper, pencils, colored pens, scissors, and glue, following the observations from Pommeranz et al [30], who investigated how the use of such materials can influence the creativity stimulus during design sessions. Thus, we made such materials available to participants to help them express their ideas.…”

A tailored smart home for dementia care

“…This occurs when a care procedure has multiple purposes, or it needs a higher level of intervention (e.g., performing) as the PwD is not responding to the lower levels (e.g., suggestion). For participants to envision their expectations of an SH and for the developers to illustrate the SH capabilities, the concept of 'creativity triggers' (Pommeranz et al 2012) was adopted in the project. A dollhouse equipped with the PIR sensors was used as a creativity trigger during the scenario evaluation process.…”