The co-design method originated from the participatory approach that led by Northern Europeans, since the 1970s. It‟s the method that produces the design results through the collaboration between users, stakeholders, and designers.
Sanders and Stappers (2007) point that, the co-design method is different from user-centered design method, which is seeing users as co-designers not just the subjects that be observed by researchers. Moreover, the rising design categories are more complexity than before and concern the experiences of using, such as the service design and interaction design. The design activities are changed from designing of products into designing for people‟s purposes. (Sanders and Stappers 2008) And, the design method should more concern to the future users of what they design. Thus, the increasingly method researches are dedicated to deeply knowing users goals and desires through co-design with them.
2.1.1 Co-design session
Sanders and Stappers (2007) proposed that the new landscape of design research has become co-designing with users and it changes the roles of designers and users to facilitators and collaborative designers. (Sanders & Stappers 2007) Therefore, it‟s important for designers to communicate with users and facilitate effective ideas by using appropriate methods and tools in the co-design sessions.
(Vaajakallio, 2007) Lucero and Vaajakallio (2009) proposed the inspiring co-design space that promotes participants be involved. (Lucero& Vaajakallio2009) Vaajakallio and Mattelmäki focus on an artificial environment that helps
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participants have things to communicate. (Vaajakallio and Mattelmäki 2007) Brandt and Messeter (2004) developed a series of board games to inspire participants to produce ideas with each other. (Brandt and Messeter 2004) These paradigms of co-design sessions would be individual presented as following, including their background, methods for communications, collaborative insights, and the concept design games.
2.1.2 Communication
The precondition for using co-design method is in believed that all people are creative. However, the people with creativities of diverse domain and life experiences need to be integrated through appropriate tools and methods. The related studies that dedicated to develop methods and tools were emphasized on the communication between participants in the co-design workshops. "The dialogue-labs method"(Lucero 2009) provides the way that help participants to create dialogues through the appropriate tools, which is an inspiring space that full of visual and tangible design materials for designers to collaborate with users.
There are seven communication tools for using, such as collage toolkit, video, and make tools, and participants could choose their preferred one to finish three-phase design exercises. Each co-design session had four participants form two pairs consisting of one designer and one end-user and its procedure is as the figure 2.1, that participants evaluated the effect of tools and design results in the end of co-design sessions. The research has pointed that it was important to have diverse materials and strategies to motivate participants to get started and to keep them on a creative mood throughout the session. (Lucero 2009)
Figure 2. 1 the procedure of the “dialogue-labs” session
From “Co-designing interactive spaces for and with designers: supporting mood-board making.
“A. Lucero, (2009). Unpublished PhD Thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology.
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Vaajakallio (2007) proposed that the key issues of co-designing are rely on arranging the artificial environment, setting the design tasks and supplying design tools and materials. In their research, the design environment was divided into three areas that belong to each design activities and there were related materials such as magazines, postcards, work table and sketch tools put in areas. The actions, discussion contents and the move line of participants were observed by researchers to explore the effect of co-design methods. Especially, the author mention that although some researchers have suggested that the more ambiguous the tools, the more surprising design openings it provides, but after their research, the tools that help participants to present ideas which make sense should not provide for them a huge amount of either abstract tools or recognizable tools such as readymade figures. Additionally, the research figure out the evolving situation that two individual designers having their own parallel conversations in the beginning, then they start to do things at the same time sharing the same conver-sation while they getting familiar with the situation and later their actions become united and thus they work as one entity.
These two studies of co-design methods provide the paradigms for facilitating the communication through design tools and inspiring space. Also, they provide the research methodology to explore co-design methods by holding workshops and observing the evolving situation of participants.
2.1.3 Collaborative insight
The co-design method is seeing user as the expert of their life experience and become the co-designer in the design process. In order to fit this role, users should be given appropriate tools to express their context of life. (Roberta Tassi2008) Designers and researchers have developed methods in context mapping and should use the techniques to get the user experiences of diverse aspects such as discovering user needs through contextual inquiry, observing the actions of the user, and using co-design method to create innovative products or service with user. (Visser, 2005) Because knowing these techniques and tools, designers have more opportunities to innovate service. (Samalionis, 2009)
According to Visser (2005), there was a method structure be built to conducted a study of context mapping and it typically involves a sequence of research steps,
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including preparation, sensitizing participants, group sessions, analysis and communication. The study of context mapping could begin with the preparations such as setting up the study involves the formulation of goals, planning, selecting participants, choosing techniques, and so on. Sensitizing participants mean to prepare them for group sessions by encouraging and motivating them to think, reflect, and explore aspects of their personal context in their own time and environment. In third stage, the session is a meeting in which participants do generative exercises that researchers or facilitators could explore their context and unexpected directions through it. The design results and data collected in the sessions were continuously analyzed and discussed in last stages. ( Visser 2005) The authors illustrated the procedure of a context mapping study as figure 2.2.
Figure 2. 2 the procedure of a context mapping study
In the stages of preparation and sensitization, the probe approach was used similar to preparation works that facilitate users to express their creativity in later
participatory sessions. The probe is the increasing approach of exploring user context through interesting ways of recording life. It promote users to become positive to get involved in design process and invite them to express the experience, mood and personal attitude through the workbooks, which might contain the diary, open-end questionnaire, tasks of sketching, making collages, or taking pictures and so on. Mattelmäki(2005) pointed that the probe approach could apply not only to be the inspiring notes but also the collaborative insights. It was used through the empathy probe process that begins with designing the workbooks, and then
recruiting users for taking life records. After that, user was invited to interview for understanding the context and ideas in their records and involved in co-design workshops. The authors illustrated the empathy probe process as figure 2.3.
From “Contextmapping: experiences from practice.” by F. S. Visser, P. J. Stappers, R.van der Lugt, & E.
B. Sanders, -N. (2005). CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 1(2), 119 - 149.
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Figure 2. 3 the empathy probe process
The author mentions that “the probes data opens fresh and holistic perspectives and vivid information on individuals and their contexts. However, the data may be too ambiguous and fragmented with too broad a focus to be used for concrete design decision-making in companies.” (Mattelmäki 2005) So, using probe approach to sensitize and prepare participants should be together with other methods for collecting completely data for the design decision. The Active@work (Vaajakallio 2007) presents a series of make tools that help to explore user context in the session stages. It helps users to bring up their real needs or expectations by making prototypes and imaging the situation of using new products.
These studies provide the paradigms for exploring users‟ insight and context, such as the probe approach, the frameworks of context mapping studies, and the make tools.
2.1.4 Concept design games
The concept design games were proposed by N. John Habraken (1987) and originally applied in architecture design and urban planning, which explore the process of design thinking by observing the actions of designers in playing design games. Brandt and Messeter (2004) emphasize that concept design games are different to the games which have win and lose, it not consider the competition between players, but focus on facilitating the ideas generation. According to Brandt and Messeter„s research, they presents a set of four design games to facilitate collaboration, improves idea generation and communication between participants.
From “Applying probes – from inspirational notes to collaborative insights. “ by T. Mattelmäki, (2005).
CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 1(2), 83 - 102.
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2.1.5 Summary
The paradigms of co-design method above are categorized into two major types:
one is devoted to improve the communication by developing tools or creating an inspiring lab that helps participants express ideas. The other one focus on exploring the user context, such as using probe approach, makes tools that applied to get user insight. Both of them have same concept that visual, tangible artifact and tools could effective support participants to communicate ideas or express experience. However, it still need some adjustment to use in intangible service design, because the studies gather here are mostly applied in designing products.
From this session, we can see the ways about how to get user insight and how to communicate with them through the co-design session. And we hope to combine the advantages of both and design the method that help designers and users to easily prototype and discuss their service ideas.