Slow design for meaningful interactions

Abstract

In this paper we report on an exploration of how to apply the theory of Slow Design to mass produced products to establish more mindful usage of products; the intention behind this is to promote product attachment and the associated sustainable benefits of long term use. Slow Design is a design philosophy that focuses on promoting well-being for individuals, society, and the natural environment. It encourages people to do things at the right time and at the right speed which helps them to understand and reflect on their actions. Several authors have proposed Slow Design principles and cases have been reported in which these principles were applied in cultural design projects. These applications indicated that Slow Design can indeed have a positive impact on wellbeing. Although promising, this philosophy has not yet been used in the design of mass consumer products. In this paper we present a design case study in which we explored how the Slow Design principles can be applied in the design of an electric fruit juicer. Two studies are reported on where the conditions for implementing Slow Design are explored. The results led to a revision of the principles for use by product designers. The main finding from the case study is that the Slow Design principles can be used to create more 'mindful' interactions that stimulate positive user involvement. This is not from designing interactions that require more time per se, but by stimulating the user to use more time for those parts of the interaction that are meaningful and less for those that are not meaningful.

From Research Prototype to Research Product

“…This imperative is well articulated through the slow technology design philosophy [20] and Mazé & Redström's [32] subsequent assertion that crafting computational objects for everyday life requires researchers "to investigate what it means to design a relationship with a computational thing that will last and develop over" [32:11]. Issues surrounding how more enduring forms of technologies could be designed have steadily gained purchase in the HCI community (e.g., [14,18,19,26,28,36,39]). …”

Evaluation Beyond Usability

“…Evaluating such theories is an almost impossible task [28], but unless they are applied to practice an evaluation is also not required for submitting such research; therefore, we argue that the lack of evaluation might be one of the obstacles to move the field forward. Although Blevis explicitly discusses a possibility for evaluating SiD through design critique [15] and using his rubric [14], we can only find two contributions at CHI that apply SiD to practice and attempt an evaluation [39,78].…”

Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap

“…This design knowledge is frequently used to fuel other ideas in SHCI and these works have yielded fruitful discussion within the community -however, there is little evidence that it is being transferred to practice and little knowledge of how well it could support design. There are case studies about students [16], do-it-yourself practitioners, [20] and professional product designers [15] that investigated the use of sustainability principles being put to design practice. In this paper, we present a similar approach and report on a comparative study including an expert analysis to yield qualitative insights about the value of one SHCI theoretical framework -the Attachment Framework.…”

“…To answer this question, we contrast our evaluation approach with that of Grosse-Hering et al [15], which is to date the only evaluation of this kind.…”