Combining knowledge of interaction design with behavior modeling and social psychology, my core competence lies in a human- and activity-centered approach to systematically analyze user behavior and translate analytical insights into elegant design solutions. A solid mix of research knowledge and hands-on design skills is my key merit.
Design Research
• User behavior modelling • Behavior engineering • Social and cognitive psychology • Human factors research • Embodied interaction • Ethnography-informed methods • Co-creation • AI and AR agents design
Combined HCI UX research Product & Service Design Human-centered AI agents research Design thinking Sustainable design
Design Skill
• UI design • Agile development • Rapid contextual prototyping • Usability testing • Unity 3D • Adobe Creative Suite • Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma • Programming (Java, html, css) • AR Prototyping
Note that this portfolio only includes the work that I have done in my bachelor and master education. For my PhD education in Design, please visit my PhD dissertation book at http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/ record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1510987&dswid=-9302
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS Design research experiences Improving Green Commuting Experience through Digital Design
5
ICT Solutions for Old Community Renewal
20
Urban Garbage Classification System Redesign
31
Enhancing Interaction Experience in Outdoor Playground
43
Hands-on design skills Start-up Tech Company in C2C E-learning
55
Branding & Visual Identity Design
58
Combination of research and design
3
Mobile App 'Daily Costs'
67
"StickyDesignSpace"- A Web-based Interactive Tool to Drive User Engagement
74
PROJECT TIMELINE
Green Commuting Public Transporation Experience Design Urban garbage User Behavior Analysis classification Branding “StickyDesignSpace” Ju’er Hutong system design Design digital platform renewal Playground ICT solutions digital Start-up C2C VI “Daily costs” community interaction E-learning platform Design app renewal
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Oct 2016
PhD project: Develope Methods to Systematically Understand User Behavior and Habits Jan 2021
4
Highlights:
Design Research:
• Ethnography-informed methods to capture user data • Turn research findings into product design • Multi-disciplinary research collaboration (design thinking and behavior modelling)
UX Design:
• UI design • Interaction design
Improving Green Commuting Experience through Digital Design Date: Oct 2012 - Oct 2014
5
1. BACKGROUND
The average driving speed is only 20km/h which has no significant difference from the verage speed of bicycles (12km/h) and buses (10.2km/h).
There are about 300,00 buses, more than 500,000,0 automobiles, and nearly 150,000,00 bicycles in Beijing. Although most citizens have their own bicycles, they prefer drive cars, which directly leads to traffic jams. Compared with the history data, although more residents had their own bicycles nowadays,but there are less residents who choose to go out by bike, but more people tend to go out by cars.
6
2. BACK TO HISTORY
2.1. Basic Facts
90s : No traffic jams; no huge traffic system and huge numbers of cars in cities
Statistics in late 2011 showed that total distance of roads in Beijing was up to 21347km which was increased by 844km compared with 2006, and urban overpasses amounted to 318; all roads connected can circle around half of the equator .
2.2. Road Condition 00s : More roads and more cars; more time wasted on traffic jams
The average daily traffic jamming time in Beijing has risen from 3.5h in 2008 to about 5h in 2012. Statistics show that in 2012, 20min to 1h was spent on way to work for about 42% people , above 60-80min for nearly 38% people, and more than 100min for 14.50%, and in contrast, only 5.50% people could make it to work location within 20min.
7
3. RESEARCH FOCUS
4. METHOD: IN-PRACTICE STUDIES 4.1. Contextual Interview In order to get a general and holistic idea about the contrasts of daily experience between private car users and bicyclers, a semistructured interview was conducted. Semistructured interview is less time consuming, a written list of questions and topics are covered in a particular order (Bernard, 2011). The main topics discussed in the interview were as following: 1. The general usages of a particular mobility tool in interviewees’ everyday practice. 2.The information that interviewees always concerned when they are using a particular mobility tool.
4.2. Photography Diary
Aiming to explore the possibility to generate incentives for private car users to choose the greener mobility modes (particularly refer to biking here). The research focus of this project was set to: understand the daily life experience of people who drive private cars and people ride bicycles, and present the contrasts of users’ daily experience who use these two mobility modes.
In order to get a detailed understanding about the daily life experience of our participants who ride a bicycle and who drive a private car for commuting, a request was sent to let them record their daily life they spend during commuting, and the participants also allowed us to commute with them. Pictures and notes were taken as the main form to record data. During commuting, the recorded data is mainly qualitative such as the things that the participants usually see and the things that draw participants’ attention. Then those pictures and notes were taken to the interview in order to have a detailed discussion between researchers and participants (see picture below). The methodology behind this photography diary method is that this research approach can help both researchers and participants recall the detailed information about the behavior in testing by using visual memories, and to achieve a intensive discussion about the during interview phrase (Latham, 2004).
1. Bernard, H. R. (2011). Research methods in anthropology. Rowman Altamira. 2. Latham, A. (2004). Researching and writing everyday accounts of the city: an introduction to the diary-photo diary-interview method.
8
5. IN-PRACTICE STUDIES
Alternative Commuter
The commute mode of urban commuters can be basically classified into three categories: 1. Commute by automobile every day 2. By public transportation or bicycle or other environment-friendly modes 3. Mix of the bove two modes
Bicycle Commuter
Mr. Ding 24 years old Employee " I ride my bicycle to go to company everyday. I usually spend nearly 30 minutes for one round trip (3 km). I think it is quite convenient, and also it is a fun experience."
Private Car Commuter Mrs. Cui 24 years old Employee " I drive my private car to company everyday. I spend about 1 to 1.5 hour for one round trip, but it is easy to get stuck in serious traffic jams, then I might spend more hours on road waiting to get home."
9
From the interview results visualized above, it can be clearly seen that the information private car commuters and bicycle commuters concern is different. The bicycle commuter Mr. Ding usually rides his bike for commuting, exercising and just for fun making friends. Regarding to what kind of information he always concern, weather forecast is very important to him. He needs to fix his bike when it gets problems, and it is easy to grasp the skills. The private car commuter Cui, she usually drives her car for commuting and shopping, but she needs to check the parking condition and avoid fines. When she plans a drive, she always checks the information about traffic flow and road condition to get rid of traffic jam as possible as she can. The information about gasoline price and maintenance fee also draw her attention.
Mr Dong works for a foreign company in Beijing. He always drives his car for commuting, picking up his girlfriend during weekdays, and shopping during weekends. However, he also rides his bicycle to hang out with his nephew, goes to nearby restaurants and buys some simple daily stuff from supermarkets.
WHAT BICYCLERS & AUTOMOBILE DRIVERS EXPERIENCE EVERYDAY
Some of the pictures from bicycle commuter Mr. Ding and private car commuter Mrs. Cui were presented. Their pictures were mainly about the street views they usually see during commuting, both of the participants took these pictures from home to company in the morning and company to home in night.
8:00AM
Street view during day time
18:00PM
Street view in night
8:00AM
Street view during day time
18:00PM
Street view in night
Comparing these two sets of images and the discussions in the following interviews. A lot of information contrast can be presented. For example, for bicycle commuter Mr. Ding, he could see and feel more green plants than the private car commuter Mrs. Cui, Mrs. Cui have more views about concrete buildings and automobiles in the street. Mr. Ding had a lot of bicycle friends who can always commute together. In the contrast, Mrs. Cui had to go alone driving her private car. Furthur, the sounds Mr. Ding heard is mainly about bird’s singing and man’s talking, while Mrs. Cui always heard voices from machine and car’s honking. In this stage, an initial idea about applying the information contrasts to represent the ways of commuting was coming out.
10
6. DESIGN IDEAS
6.1. PROTOTYPE
As mentioned before, based on the interview and photography dairy, it was obvious to find that the information that commuters perceived were different based on their chosen modes of mobility. Further more, the signs that different types of commuters always saw during their commuting was extracted based on a visual testing (see picture below).
Bicycle Commuter
Private Car Commuter
Introduction to Functions Front page: Choose and select signs, then the system will generate images and sounds based the selection.
By applying information and communication technology (ICT), an prototype of Iphone application was then designed, the basic process was to allow users take images of what they usually saw during their commuting to internet serve, and choose their mostly seen city signs according to their visual memories, then the serve will generate a clip of images and audios that reflect the situation of their ways of commuting.
Image: Call camera and upload photos to the internet server. My Document: Check the generated and downloaded short clip of images and sounds. Others: Listen to the sounds of other users’ life.
11
6.2. INTERACTION & FUNCTION
Generated Movie Clip
According to the selected traffic signs by users, the system will automatically generate the corresponding movie clip including sounds and the display of images. The background color of user interface will vary depending on the chosen signs. For example, if a user selects the signs which indicate he/she is commuting close to a green way. Then the UI will be clear and white. The sounds and displyed images will be related to clean nature.
My Document
If the user presses the download button. The downloaded movie clip (sounds with the display of images) will be saved in "My Files" as well as in mobile phone locally.
Others
In this function, the user can select a region that she/he wants to listen to, and then she/he can play the sounds that are shared from others in this region. The user can also download the shared sound with display of images, and check the signs that are chosen by original user to generate this movie clip.
On the contrary, if a user selects the signs which reflect that she/he is commuting by private cars, then the UI will be dark and black. The images displayed will be related to pollutions and sounds will be noises.
12
7. EPILOGU From collecting the basic facts about Beijing’s transportation condition to the phase of setting up research focus, applying methods and analyzing results. This project tried to provide insights about the different daily life experience of people who drive private cars and who ride bicycles. With an iPhone application prototype design, I tried to propose ICT solutions to give private car commuters the awareness about their unhealthy commuting ways. This project was conducted in Bachelor period, there were some places need to be further discussed and improved. For example, the interview and testing could be done in a more systematic way, a theoretical framework could be proposed, and more participants was required to get a holistic understanding of the research focus. Being aware the flaws of this project, and learning from the experience of this project. A more comprehensive and interdisciplinary research study related to urban mobility was conducted during Master period in Uppsala University, Sweden. The study: The “ New Fare Structure of Public Transport In Uppsala County- How is the Fare Change Perceived and what are the Impacts? ” will be presented in this portfolio. Another insight I got during this project was that, I found in the mega city of China such as Beijing and Shanghai, people’s awareness about why and how to move toward to a greener and cleaner mobility was still weak. So Iinitiated a flash website named “ Low-Carbon Travel” which aims to motivate young people travel in low-carbon way and co-created the flash website with other 4 team members. We applied gamification to encourage users to understand the basic knowledge about low-carbon travelling. The whole flash website including prototype, interface and interaction design was completed successfully and can be fully operated. The detail information about the lowcarbon travel websites will be briefly presented in the following pages.
13
A RELATED WORK: LOW-CARBON TRAVEL WEBSITE This project was oriented from an initail idea: building a flash website for advocating low-carbon travel. Coloborated with other four classmates, we started constructing this flash website.
In order to make learning more fun and avoid the didactic feeling, we decided to apply interactive stopmotion animation to attract website visitors' attention. So browsing the whole website is like having a tour. By selecting different transportations (such as bicycle, motorcycle, vans, train, airplane and so on), people will get the basic facts about how much carbon emission this particular transportation tool has.
Through investigation, there were several websites introducing the concept of low-carbon travel with static words and pictures, which seemed to be dull and highly didactic (see right picture). Those websites failed to guide website visitors to learn the facts about low-carbon travel. We want to break such bottleneck by making our websites full of fun. The concept of gamification was applied in the design of the websites.
Three approaches to control the website: drag the mouse, roll the mouse wheel and keyboard operation.
Every scenic spot stands for a country, and provides tips and basic information about low-carbon travel facts in that contry.
After clicking the scenic spot, there is a brief summary about the measures and contributions of that country towards lowcarbon travels.
14
INSPIRATION FROM CHILDREN'S PAINTING
For the visual design part, we got inspirations from children’s paintings. We decided to apply this style into the design of our website to remind visitors the awareness of travel in a low-carbon way.
Users can transfer their transportation tools at any time during their travel.
15
Every transportation tool has its corresponding value for carbon emission. Therefore, users can compare different transportation instruments before they decide which to take.
1. INTRODUCTION
This study, through an interdisciplinary approach, investigates public transportation in Uppsala county. The specific focus of this paper is to examine the recent ticketing and fare restructure in Uppsala. The new ticketing and fare structure was created to meet sustainability demands of regional development, environmental concerns and doubling of public transport usage. However, the new ticketing and fare structure has raised questions about fairness and accessibility. This study attempts to identify and elucidate the arguments and motivations that have influenced the decisions behind the fare restructure, its potential to achieve the Doubling Goal and to investigate how fair the fare change is perceived.
2. BACKGROUND
Public transport allows people to access goods and services, such as education, work, recreation, health care and culture, which influence quality of life (Taylor & Tassiellio Norton, 2009). As Buehler and Pucher (2011, p. 126) state: “A better utilized and more efficient public transport system could improve mobility options, reduce energy use, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions“. Therefore, urban passenger transport plays a crucial role when it comes to sustainable development (EEA, 2013).
2.1. Swedish Transport Policy Objectives Sweden aims to fulfill the goal of the EU’s White Paper (European Commission, 2011) to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050 by ensuring economically efficient and sustainable transportation. This objective is divided into: Impact Objective: aims at a safe transport system, contributes to the achievement of EU’s environmental objectives and better health conditions. Functional Objective: aims at providing everyone with basic accessibility of public transport of good quality and functionality
2.2. The Swedish Doubling Project The Swedish Doubling Project is a nationwide co-operation which aims at doubling the market share held by public transport by the year 2020 (Svensk kollektivtrafik, 2011). The Doubling Project aims at fulfilling the national Functional Objective and the Impact Objective.
2.3. Upplands Lokaltrafik (UL COMPANY) UL is the public transit department of Uppsala County Council. It is responsible for the operational and administration of public transport within Uppsala county. Around 55% of UL’s bus and train traffic costs are covered by tickets. The rest is covered by tax revenue in the form of shareholder contributions by the owners ( (Upplands Lokaltrafik, 2014).
3. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
The 30-day ticket for UL buses is a period ticket that has unlimited use within a certain time period. Prior to 1st of April 2014, public transportation in Uppsala was divided in different zones with fares based on where passengers wanted to travel.
30-day ticket: city bus -- 525 SEK; within the county -- 1260 SEK
On 1st April 2014, the fare structure in Uppsala was changed. The 30-day ticket is valid on both city busses and within the county.
30-day ticket: valid within city and county -- 790 SEK
This price structure has the consequence that a 30-day ticket becomes substantially cheaper for regularly use of the county buses, whereas regularly use of the city buses will become considerable more expensive.
4. RESEARCH QUESTION
This study aims to answer the following research questions • Why did UL change the fare structure? • What are the impacts of the 30-day ticket fare change on citizens’ planned behaviour and does the fare restructure help to achieve the Impact Objective and the Doubling Project Goals? • How fair do people in and around Uppsala perceive the fare restructure and does this restructure contribute to achieving the Functional Objective?
1. Taylor, B. D. and Tassiello Norton, A. (2009). Paying for Transportation: What's a Fair Price? Journal of Planning Literature, 24, (22), pp. 22- 36. 2. Buehler, R., Pucher, J. (2011). Making public transportation financially sustainable. Transport Policy, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 126-138. 3. European Environment Agency, (EEA). (2013). A closer look at urban transport. TERM 2013: transport indicators tracking process towards environmental targets in Europe. Luxembourg: European Environment Agency. 4. Svensk Kollektivtrafik. (2011). The Swedish Doubling Project. Stockholm: Svensk Kollektivtrafik. 5. Upplands Lokaltrafik. (2014). Our tickets and fares [electronic]. Accessed: http://wwcw.ul.se/en/Tickets/Our-tickets-and-fares/Period-Passes/30-Day-Card/ [2014-04-24].
17
5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 6. METHODS This section describes the theories and concepts, which are used to attempt to explain and understand why UL changed the fare structure, the impacts of it and how fair it is perceived.
5.1. Urbanism Theory Harvey argues for a collective or in common human right, the right to the city, which people have the right to reshape the process of urbanisation (Harvey, 2008). He states that cities have come about from the geographical and social concentrations of surplus product, so urbanisation should be seen as a class phenomenon. He further elaborates that there is an intimate connection between capitalism and urbanisation, as urbanisation is dependent on the mobilisation of surplus product (ibid).
5.2. Fairness Fairness encompasses notions of equality and non-discrimination. When it comes to fare structures, fairness entails equal access to social and economic aspects of life (Trinder et al., 1991, p.33).
5.3. Goal-Directed Behaviour Theory The Goal-Directed Behaviour Theory (MGB), which is a revision of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991), was considered to be the most appropriate to this study. MGB incorporates anticipated emotions and past behaviour into the formation of intentions and behaviours. MGB assumes that desires, which are influenced by attitudes, anticipated emotions, subjective norms and perceived behavior control, are the direct motivation behind intentions and behavior. And past behavior is a significant factor used to predict and interpret future behaviour independently of other factors (ibid) (Fig. 1).
Based on the research problem, qualitative and quantitative methods used in this study were questionnaires, discourse analysis of documents and a semistructured interview. The data collected was interpreted in relation to the theoretical framework.
6.1. Interview A semi-structured interview format was adopted in order to minimise interview bias and increase the reliability of the research.The interview with the Communication Officer of UL was developed based on preliminary research and issues raised by the pilot interview. The interview was undertaken to obtain further information about the change in the fare structure and to get an explanation of the objectives and motivations of the fare change. The interview followed a rudimentary script, lasted approximately an hour and was recorded.
6.2. Discourse Analysis The policy directive proposing the fare change, as constituted by the Swedish Public Transportation Association, was qualitatively analyzed to answer the research questions.
6.3. Survey Given the time constraints and scope of the project, it was determined that questionnaires would be an appropriate method to examine public transport users’ perception of fairness and planned behaviour. A pilot survey study was conducted first. Based on the responses from the pilot study, some questions were rephrased. The final survey included 13 questions regarding the new price structure, travel habits and perception of fairness. 100 public transport users were randomly requested to participate in the survey. Out of 100 asked, 33 travelled within the city and 67 within the region. The sample boundaries only included users that paid the ticket themselves, Users who were only using the public transportation this particular time, were not regarded as frequent users and therefore not included.
Fig. Model of goal-directed behavior theory (MGB) (Perugini & Bagozzi, 2001) 6. Harvey, D. (2008), ‘Right to the City’, New Left Review, 53, pp.23-40. 18 7. Trinder, E., et al., (1991), “Concepts of Equity, Fairness and Justice in British Transport Legislation, 1960 -1988”, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, vol.9, pp.31-50. 8. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211. 9. Perugini, M., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2001). The role of desires and anticipated emotions in goal directed behaviours: Broadening and deepening the theory of planned behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40(1), pp. 79-98.
7. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
This section presents the empirical material from the different methods. And interpret the empirical material and answer the research questions.
7.1. Perspectives on Why UL Changed the Fare Structure UL was following the politicians’ directive and believed that the new zone and fare system • would make the fare system simpler and fairer • would assist to the achievement of the Doubling Project Goals • that was best matching the local and economic conditions and the feasibility
7.2. What are the impacts of the 30-day ticket fare change on citizens planned behaviour? Expectation from Political directive and the interview with UL: An increase of users travel within the county. An decrease of users travel within the city. Result from the survey: • 80% of respondents plan to keep their previous ticket type. • Decrease public transporation share in the city. • Decrease public transporation share in the county contradict to data from political directive and the interview. • For users who plan to change ticket type, 57 % with access to car plan to change from single ticket to 30-day ticket • People with no access to car plan to travel less with public transportation
7.3. What are the impacts of the 30-day ticket fare change on citizens planned behaviour?
• Respondents who travelling only within the city area perceived the fare change to be more unfair than the respondents who travelling within the county area. • Respondents without any access to alternative forms of transport perceived the fare change to be more unfair than the respondents who have access to alternative forms of transport. • Respondents from vulnerable low income groups (student, pensioner/ retired and unemployed) perceived the fare change to be unfair than emplyed Respondents.
19
8. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION 8.1. Methodology Discussion • During the survey numerous respondents pointed out that their perceptions of fairness differ. However, this gave provided insight that fairness can be understood from different perspectives. This is a phenomenon that could be further investigated. • Moreover, given the sample size, the sample is not fully representative for UL’s whole patronage. Therefore, generalisations can only be made within the local context of the survey
8.2. Result Discussion
In relation to Impact Objective: • Most users will not change the type of ticket, which supports UL’s prediction and the behavioral theory. In relation to Functional Objective: • The fare restructure may increase accessibility and equal access for users from the county, but a decrease for users within the city from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. • The new fare is perceived unfair by most respondents, in particular from lower income backgrounds. • The decision makers did not take the fairness perspective into consideration.
One conclusion drawn from this research is that the fare change could be a way to achieve the Impact Objective and the Doubling Goal. However, it is debatable if the Functional Objective is fulfilled given that the fare change is not considered to be fair by all and that certain groups are disadvantaged by the changes.
Highlights:
Design Research:
• Socio-cultural analysis of user context from a design perspective • System analysis
Project: Decision Support Sytem for Beijing Ju’er Hutong Renewal Project Date: Jan 2014 - Mar 2014
20
1. INTRODUCTION
Traditional “Hutong neighborhood” is one of the historical features left in the old Beijing city area today. There were 17million square meters of the old architectures existed in Beijing before 1950s. Due to the urban development of Beijing city from 1950s to 1990s, only one third of them have been left until 1990 (Wu, 1994). Facing the serious conflicts between the conservation of historic city and community area and the speculative form of development involving massive demolition and ruthless displacement (Zhang & Fang, 2003), it is challenge for decision maker to support and implement decisions related to urban renewal plan. This project aims to find some insights of decision support system based on the case study of Ju’er Hutong neighborhood renewal project.
2. OBJECTIVES
Based on the case study of Ju’er Hutong neighborhood renewal project in 1990s. The aim of this study is to analyze the decision support system for the renovation of old city area in Beijing. It has following objectives: • To identify the strategies applied in the decision making process: knowledge management system and cost-benefit analysis. • To reveal the interaction of local government, local community and urban researchers in the process of influencing the decision-making. • To analyze the satisfactory of the decision from the perspective of local residents and culture development.
3. BACKGROUND
Driven by Old and Dilapidated Housing Redevelopment programme launched by Beijing government in 1990, aiming to “accelerate old and dilapidated housing renewal and provide adequate dwellings for inner-city residents”. A series of decision related to the redevelopment and rehabilitation of the old city neighborhood had been conducted in Beijing.
3.1. Overview of Ju'er Hutong
Part of Ju’er Hutong Before renewal project
Part of Ju’er Hutong After renewal project
3.2. Decisions that Had Been Made
A c c o r d i n g t o p r e v i o u s s t u d y, b e f o r e t h e In 1987, Ju’er hutong was chosen as the pilot case implementation of renewal project, Ju’er Hutong to conduct renewal project with the cooperation faced the problem below: of Beijing Housing Reform Office, Beijing East 1). Demography: There was 3180 residents lived District government, and Architectural and Urban in this area. 10% of the local residents were old Department of Tsinghua University (Wu, 1994). people above 65 years; 17% were children below 14 years old. It faced the problem to become an aging The whole project was divided into three stages: community. The first stage lasted from 1989 to 1990 involved 0.2 2). Housing conditions: Housing conditions varied hectares . from building type and period of construction. The second stage lasted from 1990 to 1993 Traditional courtyard house was built over 100 years involved 1.14 hectares . ago; Brick-built apartments was built from 1950s; The third stage lasted from 1992 to 1993 involved Low-cost building was built from the 1960s. And 7.4 hectares. nearly all of the houses had temporary shelters built by residents. 3). Infrastructure: There were 130 local yards, 5% of the total area was easy to suffer from city flood. There was a serious lack of roads, which only take up 3.5% of the total area. And 11% of the total building area were in poor quality.
1. Wu, Liangyong. (1994) The old city of Beijing and its Ju’er Hutong neighbourhood. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press. 2. Yan Zhang, Ke Fang. (2003) “Politics of housing redevelopment in China: The rise and fall of the Ju’er Hutong project in inner-city Beijing”, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, vol. 18. pp.75–87.
21
4. ANALYSIS OF DECISION MAKING PROCESS
4.1. Semi-structured Decisions of Ju’er 4.2. Knowledge Management Hutong Renewal Project System Analysis
4.3.1. Simplified Cost-Benefit Analysis: From Short-term Perspective
In the case of Ju’er Hutong neighborhood renewal project, as showed in the Table below, the decision can be classified as semi-structured as it is an infrequent decision which rely on creativity and exploration. With clearly defined goals and alternatives, specified knowledge in urban planning and architecture, economy and culture conservation is required.
The simplified cost-benefit analysis was applied to analyze the decision of reconstruct Ju’er Hutong neighborhoods both from short-term perspective and long-term perspective.
In the case of Ju’er Hutong, as it was showed in figure below, the knowledge management system are formed by three parts: local community consisted of local residents, urban planners consisted of researchers, and local government. This indicates that the system is multi-participant. During the process in generating knowledge, urban planners and researchers were responsible for conducting survey to understand current conditions and needs of Ju’er Hutong neighborhoods, summarize research results into reports and give the local government proposals, local government then worked with urban researchers to analyze alternatives and decided whether to implement the decision based on the proposal and its’ own requirements. In this case, the knowledge assets and skills were contributed to the Beijing East District government, which was the only authority in the whole project decision system.
From the short-term view, according to previous research, as showed in the figure below, looing at the first stage of renewal project, the initial input budget was 348 million RMB invested by The Beijing East District government. After construction, the output revenue was collected from mainly two ways: 1). An additional funds collected by forming the local housing cooperative that consisted of representatives from the government, work units and ordinary residents to support ordinary residents to buy their new houses in the renewal courtyard. 2). By turning built houses into commercial housing in real estate market to earn extra revenue. As a result, the monetary revenue gained from the first stage of renewal project was 160 million RMB, which means the profit is nearly 46% of the investment by local government3 (Wu, 1994).
Table. The Feature of Semi-structured decision in Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood Renewal Project.
Figure. The Knowledge Manage System of Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood Renewal Project 3. The exchange rate of RMB to US dollars varies from 1: 3.76 in 1989 to 1:5.32 in 1991 (www, National Bureau of Statistics of China: China Statistical Yearbook 2012, 2012).
22
5. PERCEIVED SATISFACTION
4.3.2. Simplified Cost-Benefit Analysis: 5.1. Perspective from Local Residents From Long-term Perspective From the long-term perspective, professor Wu, the project leader claimed that: “the benefits surpass the costs for reconstructing the courtyard model that Ju’er Hutong typically represents, as one of the most significant advantage of the courtyard model is that any parts of the building could easily be rebuild or transformed through the rapid development of Beijing urban area without interrupting the whole courtyard system (Wu, 1991)”. In another word, it is adapted to long-term Organic Renewal, and it meets to the sustainable development requirements, which emphasizes to meet the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).
According to a survey conducted by a group of researcher in Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood Courtyard Number 41 with 85 dwellers live there. Before project: • 0% satisfied of living environment • 62% can’t bear • 12% dissatisfied • 25% Ok with current situation After first stage project in 1991: a similar survey was conducted to collect evaluations of the 91 moved-in residents: • 83% satisfied with living environment • 0% not enough space • 96% not crowded or few times crowed
5.2. Perspective from Local Culture
The Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood renewal project follows the design principle of imitating and developing the architecture and planning form of traditional Chinese Courtyard to maintain the tangible culture heritage in inner Beijing city. Keeping privacy as well as the access to nature surroundings and neighborhoods is another principle that was carried out in order to restore the intangible culture heritage of Hutong neighborhood living style. In this particular project, the restoration and exploration of integrating hutong culture in urban planning and architecture filed was estimated by a lot of scholars, and overall, most of local dwellers and researchers were supporting the results of the project from culture aspect.
However, the drawback is that not all the ordinary residents returned to the new courtyard in Ju’er Hutong. Only 13 ordinary households (nearly 1/3, total ordinary households number is 44) moved back. The project leader Wu claimed that the most suitable moving-back rate is 1/2, the main reason behind the low moving-back rate is due to the low affordability of local dwellers. One potential solution in the future is to increase subsides aid from local housing
4. Wu, Liangyong. (1991) “The theory of Ju'er Hutong experiement -- The reconstruction and renovation of old residential places in Beijing (3)”, Chinese Architecture Journal, vol. 12, pp. 2-12. 5. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23
6. CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION The working system in Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood Renewal Project is urban researchers-centralized (see picture below). Strength: The advantage of the working system is that urban researchers not only play the role of design and plan local area, but also undertake more social responsibility and social justice, to help to improve the communication between local government and Ju’er Hutong community. Drawback: However at the same time, this working system also determines the decision making process, in which the decision was made mainly based on the requirements of local government and the proposals from urban researchers, but ignored the important role that local residents could play in decision making.
Based on this case study, the potential improvements for future similar cases can be promote. One suggestion is that to make more connection and interaction between the local communities with local government in the working process (see figure below). In other words, it is crucial to encourage the public involvement in each phase of the decision-making in similar cases, so some urgent demands of local community could be heard by urban researchers, city planners and local government, thus a more concrete decision making process can be achieved.
Figure. The Working system of Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood Renewal Project. Source: Wu, Liangyong. (1994) The old city of Beijing and its Ju’er Hutong neighbourhood. Beijing:
Figure. The improvement of the model in decision-making process.
24
Highlights:
Design Research:
• Apply different methods to capture user data • Turn research findings into product design • Gamification
UX Design:
• Contextual design • ICT solutions • App design
Project: "Tanhualin" historic street block development research Date: Sept 2012 – Dec 2012
25
1. BACKGROUND
1.1. GEO - LOCATION
1.2. HISTORY & ARCHITECTURE Tanhualin street blocks maintain the characteristics and texture of the traditional Chinese streets. After the First Opium War (1840-1842) and the Second Opium War (1856). This district became part of the Western settlements. During this period, Western religious got spread, many buildings such as churches, schools and libraries were built in the combination of western and eastern architectural style.
Tanhualin is located in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, China. City Wuhan is near to the central area of China, which combines the culture from South and North of China. Because of its geographic location, the city acts as a transportation junction and has relatively large numbers of mobile population. It is also the educational center and economic center of the surrounding cities.
During the period of modern history, Tanhualin was the place for activities of democratic revolution. Many educational organizations were established here. The educational culture was thus formed. In order to meet the increasing numbers of dwellers, Tanhualin had undergone tremendous reconstruction and expansion of living areas during this period. Street culture was formed in this process.
1.3. PRESENT PLANNING From the above pictures it can be seen that architectures in Tanhualin have integrated cultures and styles of each historic period. Since 2006, a protection and renovation plan Satellite Picture of Tanhualin Street Block conducted by Department of Urban Planning Tanhualin locates in the northeast part of Wuchang and Construction of Hubei Province was city with a total area of 1.02 square kilometre (from east to west with length of 1.2 kilometers, from north implemented to protect and renew living condition, cultural architectures and street to south 0.8 kilometers)1. patterns2. 1. Wuhan City Gov (2010-02-24), The historic street block–Tanhualin, http://www.whfz.gov.cn/wcqz/tslm/thl/201002/t20100224_32162.shtml [2012-09-30] 2. Hubei Urban Planning Online (2006-07-27), Planning of Tanhualin historic street block,http://csgh.hbsjst.gov.cn/Web/Article/2006/07/27/0846066095.aspx?ArticleID=e6b494a36f4b-4e86-b09c-68635fd0b2e7 [2012-09-30]
26
2. FIELD STUDY
2.2. LOCAL ENVIRONMENT
2.1. LOCAL DWELLERS
Elders got together to play chess while chatting. This folk culture here is what they called as “chatting the sky” in local language. We also found children were not interested in this kind of chatting activities of elders. For children, there is no playground in the area of Tanhualin. There were several times during the field study that we observed some children played alone in small-scale public places without any companions.
ELDERS
ADULT
CHILDREN
During the field study, we observed that people living in the area are mainly elders and children. After some brief interviews, we got the feedback that large numbers of adults were living and working outside the Tanhualin area to seek more job opportunities and enjoy modernized living lifestyle.
27
Through field study, from the above pictures, we can see that the distribution of the living area of the Tanhualin District is not in a consistent way. According to previous study and based on our observation, the buildings and living facilities are relatively old. Even the latest buildings have a history of twenty years. The space between these buildings is relatively narrow. The living environment here can be described as crowded. It is common to see some families living together in one cabin (See Picture 1,2,3). As this kind of living style has already became one of the local living custom, the residents there are good at making use of space, for example, plant vegetation and crops (See Picture 4,5,6).
2.3. LOCAL CULTURE As Tanhualin area still keeps the historic architecture and patterns, there are many visitors who go around Tanhualin to experience the local history and culture. Some of the famous places are easy to find, like the historic church mentioned before. However, based on previous observation that the arrangement of streets in Tanhualin area is highly irregular, this leads to the fact that it is hard for outside visitors to reach some of the places, which mainly represents the intangible local culture are hard to be found. For example, a post office, which has a long history and full of design of stamps, is located in a small and unobvious cabin. And there are a lot of similar places in this area. Compared to the historic architectures, the intangible culture such as local music, stories, paintings and art of handicraft also have the potential to be further promoted to outside visitors.
3. DEFINE ISSUES Based on the documents about Tanhualin’s history development and observations from field study, in this section, we focused to summarize issues and explore insights behind them. Three main issues were extracted with our interpretation, and they were interconnected to each other:
3.1. The population loss of the community Large numbers of adults chose to move out to seek job opportunities in modern city while children and elders are left behind in the street block.
ISSUES
3.3 Loss of local culture From the official protection and renovation plan conducted by local government, the tangible historic architectures and street patterns have been put into central focus. However, the intangible local custom and culture still face the dangerous of vanishing.
3.2. Lack of communication with outside area The people in Tanhualin area keep their traditional ways of living rather than those who lived in the other modern city areas. As children and elders were left behind while adults were moving out, this has deepened the issue of an isolated living and lack of communication to the outside area especially for children and elders.
28
4. ICT SOLUTIONS To solve the issues we defined in this study, instead of designing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions and applying it into the daily life of local dwellers that mainly consist of children and elders, we decided to find solutions from another angle—outside visitors just like us. We aimed to guide outside visitors to better experience not only the tangible historic architectures and also the intangible local cultures and customs. And during this process, we expect to see more communications and interactions between local dwellers and outside visitors.
As we pointed out in the result of field study that the street pattern in Tan hualin area is complex and irregular (see right picture), this might leads to the fact that outside visitors fail to go inside the area and experience the culture here. However, looking from another perspective, this is also the advantage of Tanhualin area. It brings an opportunity which allow us to apply the concept of gamification to encourge people communicate and interact with this historic place.
Blue lines: The distibution of roads. Grey block: The distribution of buildings.
Further field study were conducted, we marked the places which can present the tangible or intangible local culture in Tanhualin area (see right picture). Our idea is to let outside visitors to find these marked places by themselves. However, instead of giving them constructive guidance or map, we decided to utilize the complex and irregular pattern of Tanhualin area and make the whole experience like treasure hunting. So, according to the geographic information of Tanhualin area and the distributions of the places we listed, a prototype of application based on Iphone platform was then designed. Blue mark: The places we marked during field study.
29
5. PROTOTYPE DESIGN 5.1. FUNCTION AND PROCESS
The map of Tanhualin area will disappear after 30 seconds of display. All the targets will be presented on the map during this period.
Open the detector; the current position is located based on GPS of cellphone.
Only a certain range of area can be displayed on user's map, so the user needs to find targets following the compass and tips. The routes that user passed by will be highlighted. The user also can make drafts about the routes and architectures he/she passed by.
Once a target is found, the displayed range of area from detector will be enlarged to encourage users to explore further.
When the user end a trip, the travel routes and found targets in Tanhualin area during this trip will be generated and can be shared through social networks, so more people can be attracted to visit Tanhualin historic street block.
6. EPILOGU During the investigation of Tanhualin historic street block development, history review, literature review and observation was applied as the main research methods. Three core issues exist in the development of this historic district: the population loss of the community, lack of communication with outside area, and loss of local culture were identified and illustrated in this study. By applying ICT solutions and concept of gamification, we try to design the prototype of an iPhone application to encourage more outside visitors to communicate and interact with local residents and local culture, and promote the understanding of local intangible heritages. Being aware that the project was not fully integrated, for example, the application still needs to be tested and iterated to get more feedbacks. However learning from this project, I hold the believe that by applying ICT into urban development, it might be a potential efficient and creative way to solve sustainable issues exist in urban area.
Picture. Interaction prototype for Iphone application
30
Highlights:
Design Research:
• Apply different methods to capture user data • Turn research findings into product design • Human factors research
UX Design:
• Unity 3D and programming (Java) • Ergonomic design
Project: City Garbage Bin Redesign and Garbage Classification Redesign Duration: Jan 2012 – Apri 2012
31
For two kinds of trashes, similar in shape and label, passers-by can not quickly distinguish functions of each respectively. These kinds of garbage are almost arbitrarily sorted.
After the research in street ,we found that there are 6 kinds of garbage people used to throw into the garbage can in the street.They are beverage bottles,Newspapers or magazines,plastic products,peels,leftover dishes, yogurt boxes. And we found in each can ,there exited these kind of garage,for example 70% of beverage bottles we found are in recycling can while there were 30% in other waste.
There are three kinds of people in the streets: spammers, sanitation workers and scavengers. The division of labor is clear-cut, that is, sanitation workers are responsible for cleaning the streets and trash in certain areas and then directly sent to the collecting station, while the scavengers only collect objects such as bottles and paper and then sent to sell for money.
32
Garbage
Convenient for people to throw their garbage
Which Kind?
Distinguish
Random Classification (wrong parts)
Properly
Wrongly
However, it provides so convenient service that people will hardly concern classifying garbage. Therefore, the government was forced to build more garbage collections and hire more people to make classification. The distribution of garbage collections in Beijing.
Doubting
(only parts to be correct)
Random Classification (wrong parts)
As a normal pedestrian,there are three thinking processes of throwing the stuff in your hand. First you distinguish your stuff, some people may give up in the beginning. Then you may make a properly classification because you are sure what kind of garbage it belongs to. Or you may doubt whether it blongs to recycle or other waste,and make a random classification. In the whole process, only through one way can people correctly classify the garbage, that is to say, other three ways make the wrong classification.
33
On the other hand, the government spent more money to teach the public of the basic knowledge and importance of garbage classification in the past few years.
But according to the survey, only a small number of people classified garbage, while most people in the streets did not comply with the regulations of garbage classification.
The Problem of Classification It does not meet the common sense of Chinese people and classification practices.
PROBLEM DETECTED
The Problem of Shape It will be difficult to distinguish trash in the street.
The Problem of Structure Scavengers are difficult to collect the waste products they want.
Lack of Awareness Most people do not form the consciousness of garbage classification.
Too Convenient To Throw
INSIGHT
Garbage cans set in the streets are so convenient that passers-by develop a habit of not making garbage classification.
It Only Take Pedestrian Into Consideration The design of existing trashes ignores scavengers who are the huge number of disadvantaged groups in the cities of China.
34
CLASSIFICATION REDESIGN
35
Recyclable
Newspapers, magazines, beverage bottles, metal, paper skins and so on.
Recyclable Materials of Low Value-added
Things with little oil stain: paper or plastic covers, plastic products, disposable tableware, tetra pak, yogurt boxes, sliced paper (towel is not included).
Residue of Food
Raw: peels, tea and coffee grounds, dead twigs and leaves. Ripe: leftover dishes, expired food.
TESTING AND DATA COLLECTION According to the common understanding of material by Chinese people, we decide to make an operational test after determining the method of classification, to make sure of its feasibility.
This is the project of our unity3D course, following the lead of our instructor and collaboration with students, we use technology of 3D game to simulate realworld situations where people throw garbage. We have designed different types of garbage which are common in the street. Users, through the manipulation of the girls in the game, pick up trash and litter into the corresponding garbage cans. At the same time, the user behaviour of garbage classification will be recorded in the game background. We sent the game to office staff and students in Beijing, about 50 persons, through social network, and collect the data.
GAME DATA SHOWS
Traditionally, the dustbins on the left side of the page can be divided into recyclable garbage and those cannot be recyclable.
Later, we will make improvement on the scene. Dustbins on the right side of the page will adopt the new classification, which will be divided into the recyclable, low-value recycling, and food residues
About 46% of people will make mistakes on garbage classification by the traditional way of classification, among which plastic bags are of the highest error rate. While adopting the improved way of classification, only 24% of people make mistakes with any prompting.
36
GET IDEAS FROM
FUNCTION: Constantly inhaling fresh air, exhaling foul air to maintain life activities.
There are several parts in human bodies in charge of expelling toxic and absorbing.So i think instead of create some dustbins looks like cute animals or create a dustbin which are based on high-tech.Why we don't use ourselves as the exterior shape.
Function: Absorbing and Digesting Provide material and energy needed
Garbage bin here functions as both street equipment and artistic device, which could spread related information by exhibiting low additional recycling garbage to warn people the erroneous thought of excessive consumption.
37
PAPER FOLDING
In the picture are the statues and frescoes that depict ancient people, being excavated from the China's historical sites. In ancient times, people tended to describe themselves as strong and tall. People in the modern society go by contraries, so it may be the trend of human evolution. Therefore, the garbage bin is designed as short and stout with reduced limbs, with the combination of garbage, in order to reflect the change of the human beings by materials and resulting garbage.
38
ERGONOMICS AND SHAPE DESIGN
39
INTERACTION DESIGN Application of scene shelf, slot, candied haws on a stick,hair. Features Centrally placing the huge number of same articles Behavior Insertion and extraction
Advantages convenient for putting in and taking out; saving space Disadvantages needs a certain number of items to the formation of model of a plug-in articles placement
Application of scene supermarket shelves, fruit stand
Advantages Only by one step to put in and take away; definite category Features Disadvantages Items are neat and orderly placed It needs to keep arranging to maintain a regular order Behavior Put into and take away
Application of scene storage box, desk, wardrobe, luggage, bus coin. Features Items are dumping, no specific order Behavior Throw in, dump
Advantages Facilitates storage, convenient and efficient; space saving; protecting items cutting Disadvantages off from the outside world; portable, unable to classify
40
41
42 33
1. INTRODUCTION
A panorama of Pelle Svanslös Lekplats Outdoor play is important for the development of children both at physical level and mental level1. Nowadays, many children prefer to spend their time playing video games or watching TV at home instead of playing outside1. In this project, cooperated with other three classmates from Embodided Interaction course, we aimed to introduce IT Intervention to enhance the experience of children’s outdoor play at Pelle Svanslös playground at Uppsala, Sweden. The Pelle Svanslös playground is located in the Carolina Park in Uppsala and was opened in June 2014. Inspired by a wellknown story of Pelle Svanslös, the highly themed playground is built with swings, slides, a Merry-Go-Round, a Bakery Shop, a Police Office, a Pelle’s House, a Church, an Animal Hut, a Water Pump, and a small Pond. When our course began, the playground had been in operation for three months. The major goal of the Pelle Svanslös playground is to encourage the play between children by providing a common play space for them. In addition to that, the playground also aims to provide a space for conversation between children and adults2.
1. Sturm, J., Bekker, T., Groenendaal, B., Wesselink, R., & Eggen, B., 2008, June, Key issues for the successful design of an intelligent, interactive playground. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Interaction design and children (pp. 258-265). ACM. 2. Uppsala, Uppsala Kommun, http://www.sis.se, Pelle Svanslös lekplats, 2014-04-24, http://www.uppsala.se/.../Pelle-Svanslos-varld-i.../
44
2. THEORY
2.1. Open-ended Play: According to Hopma, Bekker and Strum, open-ended play is “a form of play where game rules and goals are not predetermined. Instead, players can create their own game goals3” Seitinger sees the open-ended play as a broader term, she describes open-ended play as a play activity that can encourage children to experiment different patterns of play4. Integrating the above definitions. we see the common feature of openended play as encouraging children to test different play patterns with lack of predefined rules. Here we apply this understanding of open-ended play in the design project.
2.2. Meaning and Creating: Dourish argues that the responsibility of creating and communicating meaning belongs to users not designers. Although the designers may propose expectations, only the user can determine how to deal with the meanings6. We take this phenomenological thinking into account in our design process of IT intervention in the playground as a guidance of analysis.
2.3. Play Stages of Children:
According to the psychological data analyzed by a group of Spanish architects4, four play stages of children ranging from 0 to 10 years old are presented depending on their playing behaviors:
0-3 year old children 3-6 year old children 6-8 year old children 8- 10 year old children tend to experiment tend to have lots of like more physical have the ability to play with their bodies role-play activities structured games
Based on our observation, the majority of children playing in the Pelle Svanslös playground are estimated to be in the age of three to eight years old. Thus, the age group that we are focusing on is the stage when they are still in the process of forming and experimenting cognition of their body and minds mainly through the role-play and physical activities in play.
3. METHOD
As this design is research-oriented, the primary objective is to create artifacts that can answer the practical issues 7. The qualitative research method is applied as it provides rich descriptions of complex phenomena8, and interprets intentions and meanings given to events and situations9. Observation: Aiming to discover more about children’s behaviors and use of spaces, the observation was done from a distance to avoid influencing their play activities.In the playground four observers went separately and took their own notes. The descriptions of environment and any small activities that occurred in the environment were gathered. Photos were taken to analyze and document how children used the playground. Epoché and Phenomenological reduction: To eliminate any preconceptions and bias from the data collection, we tried to write and process each observation note as naïvely as possible. No interpretation was made at this point. Then we combined the notes and tried to capture the essence of the phenomenon we had seen. The data was transformed into codes and themes. At the end of this process, the themes we had were ‘A highly themed park’, ‘Socializing’, ‘Role-playing’ and ‘Play patterns’. Analysis: We took the themes further and related them to the course theories. Instead of discussing in the group, we did individual reflection that resulted in four different blog posts with domain analysis and some rough design ideas. Later a presentation session was arranged to get feedback from our professor and a guest lecturer. Tinkering Workshop: A tinkering workshop with Arduino was conducted to equip the team with the knowledge of sensor and actuator capabilities. Since such technologies were our main materials in designing the interactive system, it is helpful to understand the properties. Brainstorming: To come up with the collective thinking of the group for design solutions by engaging with each other and generating ideas.
3. Hopma, E., Bekker, T., & Sturm, J., 2009, Interactive play objects: the influence of multimodal output on open-ended play. In Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (pp. 78- 89). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 4. Seitinger, S., 2006, Animated props for responsive playspaces (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). 5. Sturm, J., Bekker, T., Groenendaal, B., Wesselink, R., & Eggen, B., 2008, June, Key issues for the successful design of an intelligent, interactive playground. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Interaction design and children (pp. 258-265). ACM. 6. Dourish, P., 2004, Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT press. 7. Fällman, D. (2007). Why research-oriented design isn’t design-oriented research: On the tensions between design and research in an implicit design discipline. Knowledge,Technology & Policy, 20(3), 193- 200. 8. Sofaer, S. (1999). Qualitative methods: what are they and why use them?. Health services research, 34(5 Pt 2), 1101. 9. Brock-Utne, B. (1996). Reliability and validity in qualitative research within education in Africa. International review of education, 42(6), 605-621.
45
4. OBSERVATION & ISSUE 4.1. Fixed Object and Cleanliness of Playground
4.2. Simple Play Activities
• The playground was highly themed by Pelle Svanslös's story. • All the objects in the houses were designed base on the theme and they were fixed. • Dirt seemed not allowed by adults. They spontaneously clean out the things that didn't fit to the playground.
• According to our observation, most of the play activities were simple and repetitive and they were very dependent on the facilities, such as drove the bus, pumped water. • The Water Pump was very popular among children as they could play together with it at the same time.
ISSUE: The “cleanliness” of the playground seems to hinder children from bringing other resources to the playground. Besides, the current structure of the playground is restricted by the strong theme which in a way constrains children’s play.
ISSUE: Most of the interactions with this playground are simple and predictable, children play as what the place tells them. Despite the water pump, the playground provides few opportunity for children to play together.
46
5. PROJECT GOAL
6. DESIGN QUESTION
According to the issues that we found, we set our goal as:
Furthermore, we formulated our design question as:
"To support an open-ended play of children by encouraging them to create and communicate meaning of play."
"How can interactive technology provides materials to allow more open-ended play activites?"
47
7. INITIAL IDEA 7.1. Brainstorming
7.3. Decision So some ideas came to the surface, one promising design idea started with the question "what if the post box can actually 'deliver' a post to the houses?" A simple camera / scanner setup inside the post box and some displays in the houses could create such illusion. The letter could be available for picking up in the house. After we built the model, a design critique session was hold and during which we've narrowed down our concept ideas to one. We abandoned the design ideas which might restrict the diverse play patterns of children, and avoid the play with predictable result that children can easily get bored.
Based on the design question, a brain-storming was conducted in order to explore as much potential design solutions as possible. All ideas, written on posters, were collected together on a board and categorized into several groups in terms of different patterns, such as, social interaction, creating things, role play, etc. Then we started analyzing and screening all these ideas.
Therefore, the Postbox was choosen as our final decision beacuse the system facilitates play without limiting its meaning. Furthermore, it connects different places in the playground, allowing social interaction in the whole space.
7.4. Iteration Process
7.2. Modeling Then we built a complete model of the playground to get a holistic view of the space and see how those ideas can fit in there. The mock-ups were built with strings to depict relationship between different playground areas.
Goal
Prototyping Method
Results
Insights
As visualized in the picture above, in order to get a holistic view of the evolution for our design, the research process in the iteration part was proposed. We first put forward goals for each iteration, then we conducted the prototyping based on our design ideas, afterwards we set up the method for usability testing, then we recorded and summarized the observation results, after that, insights were extracted based on group discussion and peer review. We take these insights from each evaluation session to iterate the prototypes further. For next iteration, the same research process was applied.
48
8. SCENARIO OF POSTBOX IDEA 1. A boy sees a postbox. 2. The boy draws a postcard. 3. The mail slot is blinking in order to promote him to put the mail into the mailbox through the hole. 4. He puts the post into box. 5. He chooses a button which indicates the building to which he wants to send this mail. 6. After the mail enters the mailbox, the blinking stop and the system starts scanning and converting it into digital image. 7. Processes the image by adding some lovely stickers (e.g. image of Pelle Cat) and texts etc. 8. Sending the post. 9. The house recieves the post. 10. The girl playing in that house is surprised by this mail. 11. The post is displaying on the screen wall. She likes this postcard so she presses a button to print it out. 12. She takes the postard away with her.
49
9. ITERATIONS 9. 1. ITERATION 0 GOAL:
Preliminary testing of the idea.
METHOD:
In the first part of the test, one of our team member pretended to be a post man stood beside the postbox to help children write a post card, then sent this post card to a house selected by children. In the second part of the test, the post cards were left on the postbox. We removed postman and hide ourselves behind buildings while observing children’s behavior.
RESULTS: • During the first test run, children were scared by the postman and stayed away from the postbox. • During the first test run, after the postman was removed, children started approaching the postbox and drawing stuffs on papers. Some papers were left on the other places of the playground (picture left). • There was one particular girl spent a long time creating postcards, then she took the postcard and showed it to her parents. (picture below).
50
METHOD:
9.2. ITERATION 1
Wizard of Oz Technique
GOAL:
Testing of the physical prototype and interaction process.
PROTOTYPING v1.0: STEP1: One of our group member was hiding behind the postbox when participants insert cards. STEP2: The "Wizard" got postcard from the backside. STEP3: The "Wizard" took a picture and send it to the tablet in the selected house. STEP4: Another group member stayed in the building showed the image in tablet to the participant.
RESULTS:
Our participant was a 5-year old girl (alias name Susan). 1. First time play: Susan hesitated what to do after she put the posts into the postbox, she listened to her mom's guidance about whether she could get mail in the chosen destination.
Front side of the prototype
Back side of the prototype
• The major part of the hole of the postbox is covered by a front board. • Four clay buttons are attached with hand drawing pictures, three of which represented buildings in the playground. • The question mark button means sending letter to a random building. • Colorful papers and pens are left on the top of the postbox. • The back side of the postbox is covered with a wooden board which can be flipped up.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION: • We found that the interactive feedback of the system were needed.
51
2. Understood the system quickly: After she finished one session, one father and two children came by and checked the postbox with curiosity. Susan started to explain how it works to them.
9.2. ITERATION 2 GOAL:
• Testing with younger age group. • Testing the feedback session when user press the button.
PROTOTYPING v2.0:
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION:
• From this observation, we can understand that the basic operation was easy for at least this five-year old girl.
3. Familiarity with the place: Susan matched the icons on the button with the real buildings in the playground easily. But she couldn't understand the question mark button mentioned before.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION: • Apparently, more durable physical buttons were demanded.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION:
• We assume children are capable of matching drawings of buildings on the buttons with the real ones. • Considering delete the question mark button.
Changes from last prototype: • Four LEDS are installed under the buttons. They are controlled manually by the wizard everytime a letter came in. • Question mark button has been removed from the board.
52
METHOD: The same methods from iteration1 were applied with minor adjustments: • Intervention: The session began with an explanation to the parents on how the postbox works so they can guide their children, but we didn't provide extra hints during play. • Wizard of Oz: The LEDS were lighten manually when postcards were put inside the postbox.
2. Expectation at destination: Children expected to see the postcard from their own. There were few occasions when we showed them letters from someone else by mistake, they looked puzzled.
RESULTS: Participants: one 3-year old boy (alias name Olof), and another 4-year old boy (alias name Marcus). Both of them were accompanied with their mothers. 1. Letter sending behaviour: There were inconsistencies about whether to put the letter first or to press the button first.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION:
• The tablet needs to be able to show multiple images at the same time and work more independently.
3. Creativity in content: The children showed amazing creativity on drawing the postcard. After they understood the concept of sending a postcard to somewhere, many meaningful postcards were created. For example, Olof once wrote “Hej, Grisen! (Hi, pig!)” and sent it to the Pig House. Marcus drew a flower and also a birthday cake with a message, “GRATTIS! (Congratulation!)”. Another surprising finding was caused by a slip. After Marcus put his postcard in the postbox, the wizard did not blink the LEDs in time. Then he told his mother to wait for the system’s response instead of going to the destination directly.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION: • The light feedback need to be better synchronized with user's behaviour.
53
One of the children even drew a mouse and wrote “Till Pelle. (To Pelle, which is the cat in the story of Pelle Svanslös.)”.
10. CONCLUSION
9.3. ITERATION 3 PROTOTYPING v3.0:
By appling phenomenological approaches, we have observed and described the potential issues mainly about the limited play materials and predictable play pattern in the highly themed playground - Pelle Svanslös.
Prototype 3.0 is designed based on the insights from previous tests, we are aiming at developing a more independent system without too much intervention from us:
We acknowledge these issues because we believe children benefit from diverse play pattern 10 . Our goal is to introduce an IT intervention that supports open-ended play. During the design and evaluation process. We realize that our designed play deals with the creativity layer which is far more powerful than an interactive system of the postbox.
• The buttons are made by physical plastic material instead of clay. • Also, the buttons have their own assigned LEDs to give a more meaningful feedback. (example: red LED will light when the red button is pressed) • Cables enable the wizard to receive the input of which button is pressed.
However it is hard to say firmly that our goal was fulfilled with our current design in a limited time period and with limited group of participants.
• Frames for tablets are developed so we can leave the tablets inside the houses and watched them from a distance.
For future research, one suggestion is to observe how children would play with the system together. Only by seeing this, we would have the possibility to know how the children actually create and share meanings with each other during play.
( Due to time constraint of the project and iteration of technical improvement, the third evaluation has not been completed.) 10. Zigler, E. F., & Bishop-Josef, S. J. (2004). Play under siege. Yale’s Center in Child Development and Social Policy. In, 21, 1-4.
54
Highlights: UX Design:
• UX and UI design (web platform) • From paper sketches to final product online • Programming (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) of interactive features • Usability testing • Fast-paced agile development environment in business context
Project: UX designer, Duobei.con Date: Sept 2011 - Jan 2012
55
DUOBEI.COM
Duobei.com is focused in building online social learning network in China. You can find the best teachers and courses here, also you can public your own courses and share your knowledges. It is a real-time online platform dedicated to serving for countless teachers, trainers and knowledge distributors. Konwledge is available regardless of age and professional background.
The sharing of knowledge is not limited by urban mobility.
The sharing of knowledge is not blocked by geographical distance.
AS AN INTERN IN DUOBEI:
Work I participated in: 1. Participated in the programming of user interface. 2. Conceived and designed commercial animation.
I had my internship at Duobei when it was in its start-up stage. At that time, I worked during weekdays while took courses on weekends at school. I am very proud to be an intern in Duobei, because Duobei is affecting the way of acquiring knowledge by introduing ICT (Information Communication Technology), which enables everyone to be a teacher, a student and makes knowledge accessible for those who desire to learn more skills, such as children and adults who live in remote areas and lost their chance to go to school. Apart from this, the platform also promots the linkage between ICT services and virtual mobility, especially in the area of virtual meeting and online education. 56
INTERFACE & PROGRAMMING
The left picture is a collection of interfacts from virtual classroom. As a presenter, he/she can speak and operate their uploaded file. As an audience, he/she can raise questions, give feedbaks and make comments. I was involved in constructing functions below: To upload files with pdf/ppt/jpg format for virtual presentation. Users can make notations. Erase the notations. Users can ask questions and speak by raising hands. Press CTRL to start the microphone function. Job description: Completed the interface function programming list above, developed file management system, participated in interface interaction design, and summarized users' experience. Colloboration: Teamwork, 2-3 months. Technology and software: Flex4.0, AS3.0 ; Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator.
ANIMATION DESIGN Conceived and designed a flash animation which was used as a publicity for Duobei.com. I applied minimalist and iconized design language to visualize the free, interactivity and sociability characteristics of Duobei.com. Job description: Initial planning, idea proposal, visual design, animation making. Completion situation: Independently within 2-3 weeks Technology and software: ActionScript3.0, FLASH, Illustrator
57
Visual Identity Design for METADESIGN.INC
Project: Visual Identity Design for METADESIGN.INC Date: May 2012 - July 2012
58
The First Time Launching Campus Recruitment in China
BACKGROUND The Company
MetaDesign is a leading international branding and design agency. It elevates the perception of brands by designing brand experiences that communicate the identity of company and its products to customers, whether in the physical, print or digital worlds.
The Office
MetaDesign Beijing offers a professional environment, exciting projects, crossdisciplinary teams, renowned clients and a culture that recognizes the importance of work-life balance.
The Scenario
MetaDesign is launching a recruitment campaign on different relevant campuses in China. The recruitment aims at finding trainees for design.
The Task At Hand
Create either a print ad or digital ad to convey the recruitment, including the consideration of colors, shapes, typography, images, a testimonial. Also create a real copy including the headline and body text. 59
INVESTIGATION ANALYSIS & STRATEGY Students
Few chinese students know it well. "As a trainee, I want to learn from the works"
UNIQUE METHODS
Recruitment Company
TTraditional campus recruitment of Chinese firms, mainly teach about company performance. With single forms, interest of students can hardly be aroused.
RECRUITMENT KEY WORDS
Give workshops
Close to student life The most creative way Differentiates it from ordinary campus recruitment
MEDIA TO BROADCAST print media + social network media + activities
THE EXPECTED RESULTS Therefore, we should expand the brand's influence in campus when recruiting outstanding interns. Only by doing so, can Metadesign continues to recruit more excellent students in the future. 60
VISUAL SYMBOL
VISUAL IDENTITY
Firstly, we decide to design a slogan for recruitment campaign. Consider of it is held by MetaDesign, there should have some relation with the name of MetaDesign. So we decide to keep the “Meta” as original typeface and add a letter “U” after it. “U” means “university” and it has the same meaning as “you”.
An icon is also important for MetaU. We need to translate the spirit of MetaU to image. Here is the path we thought about:
Target
Direction University & You We also pay much attention on the VI design. We establish not only the different size of Logo in order to satisfy various kinds of usage, but also the proportion of each elements of it. What’s more, consider of the multiformity, there is a standard for the MetaU add subtitles. Many other stuff also were designed by us, such as envelop, identity card (with a QR code on the back) and attendance card.
61
POSTERS DESIGN As a major media in campus, poster plays a vital role in the promotion. our main task is attract the people who is in the field of strategy, design or communication, as more as possible, and let them join in our speech to know the integrated works MetaDesign do for a brand.
We simply put the core information as huge as possible - strategy, design and communication.
We cut the information about time and location as short as possible to make people easy to remember and decrease the visual noise in the same time.
To attract the students who is not familiar with MetaDesign, we set the works that MetaDesign do for the brands as background. To make them consider about the importance of what we do.
HANDBILLS DESIGN As the handbill sent along the roads are often ignored or later threw away, our handbill should contain these characteristics below to capture people's attention and make them keep it. Be attractive in the vision According to a psychology principle that human face is most attractive among all kinds of images, we decide to use portrait on our handbill.
Be useful if we try to make it a little bit more useful, things may change. To give our potential client a little more reasons to keep it, we make a calendar on the back of it.This enhances the possibility that they keep our handbill for a longer time and remember our company. 62
ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA
Teaching building and school canteen is the place where students are most concentrated. These kind of places like the group in facebook, students will gather and discuss the issues happend in school.
WEB PAGE DESIGN
Chopsticks are the tools that every student will use when they are eating, We design the cover of chopsticks to express MetaDesign is finding trainees. In this way, we not only deliver the information but also convenient the students. When students taking elevator in first floor, sometimes they may wait for a long time with nothing to do. So we came up with an idea that put a sticker on the wall. Students can feel like they can have intersection with MetaDesign. What’s more, the “up button” will leave people a good impression that MetaDesign can let you cheering up.
In "404" page, it said that "sorry, this page is not available. But a trainee position is available". And the detailed information is presented in this page.
There is a banner on the home page of the MetaDesign website .When click the banner , it will turn to the detail-information page ,and this page will tell a "404" joke . 63
Visual Identity Design for RuiFang TEA. INC
Project: RUIFANG TEA.inc Visual Identity Duration: Mar 2012 - May 2012
64
VISUAL IDENTITY
In China, tea is full of ancient flavor, and a good tea-leaf is considered as historical treasures. Since Ruifang is a tea company, we positioned the corporate visual identity of Ruifang as one of antique beauty.
Seal, one of most ancient engraving text of China, with the combination of traditional calligraphy and power, is a symbol of ancient Chinese art. So we selected seal as logo for Rueifang to show its unique culture of antique beauty.
Classic
65
Classic Red Seal
Cowhide material
The white
VISUAL IDENTITY SYSTEM
66
67
20
1. INTRODUCTION The app enables users to have a clear record of each bill. All the bills are displayed on a reverse chronological timeline with different data and tags to make it easier for users to track their consumption history. Users will also be encouraged to save money through fulfilling virtual tasks. The more tasks they could complete the more virtual badges they could achieve. Those badges can be shared on social networks. In our design process we applied the User-centred Design approach to find out users' behaviour and needs of tracing daily expenses, we iterated the function and interaction design to make sure our product meets users' requirements.
Watch Video
21 68
2. USER RESEARCH
3. PERSONA
What is the most serious problem that students encountered when they trace their daily expenses and manage their money? (5 - Very serious, 0 - Not serious) Age: 23 Senior student at Communication University of China As a university student, every month her parents give her certain amount of money. She always shops on impulse. She tried to use accounting application, but always forgets and sometimes feels lazy to do so, so give up accounting.
From the above result, combined with individual interview, we found that the fundamental need behind the accounting behaviour is that students want to save money. This is especially important since most of them don't have strong stable income. Therefore, they need more reasonable plan for their daily expenses.
69
Age: 21 Junior student at Science and Technology University of Beijing His parents deposit a certain amount for his living expenses at the beginning of each study term. The main living expense is on eating, finance management is not a big concern to him. But recently he wants to buy an expensive mobile phone, so he has to start to save money. 22
4. AFFINITY DIAGRAM After transcribed all the interview data and analyzed findings, we used affinity diagram to narrow down the features this app would have. Based on the result, we generated six key elements as follow:
70
70 23
5. DESIGN PROCESS When we completed the prototype we made informal interview with real user to consolidate our design idea and receive feedbacks.
71
24
6. GAMIFICATION We believe that functional, practical software can also be fun to use. Indeed, cultivate good financial habits is a difficult thing, so we want to change users' attitude first. Referring back to the result from user research, we knew that students have the willing to save money. However, what they lack is a motivation to urge them stick with it. Gamification as a persuasive technology can be used as one of the solutions for making saving money as a fun thing to do. We designed some predetermined tasks for them, which required saving certain amount of money, for example 500, and when the task is completed user will achieve a badge as a reward and he/she can choose to share it on social network.
Ongoing task & completed task.
Two ways to deposit / withdraw money: 1. Drag and drop the round button. 2. Input the amount.
Illustration: Saving money is like knitting a sweater, first you need to have a good plan, then be patient and keep “needling” little by little.
Choose other task.
72 25
7. OUTCOMES
Menu 73
Watch Video
Accounting Page (Click to watch product video)
Task Page 26
StickyDesignSpace: How to Get Users hooked to Your Products and Services Supervisor: Prof. Elaine M. Huang; PhD. Christian Remy. Department of Informatics, People and Computing Lab University of Zurich, Switzerland Highlights:
Design Research:
• Apply different methods to capture user data • User engagement research • Translate UX theoretical knowledge into practical design strategies
UX Design:
• UX and UI design (web platform) • Prototyping and programming (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) • Usability testing • From early concepts to final product online
Master thesis available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A853201&dswid=9193
74
Work Highlights Research Part
Design Part
• Studied and employed "Research through Design" approach.
• Followed the User-Centered design concept and Research through Design approach.
• Qualitative method and analysis: observation, semi-structured interview, affinity diagram, user case study.
• Successfully designed, developed, and iterated the high-fidelity interactive prototype.
• In-depth study of the Attachment Framework in interaction design. • Transformed the theoretical framework into practical product design principles.
• The tool was evaluated by 4 design participants. Results were documented and analyzed.
• Incorporated the design principles into a design space for designers to use.
Academic Contribution • Offered insights of how design practitioners integrate the Attachment Framework into design process and practices. • Shed light on the possibility of creating interactive tools to bridge the theoretical roots of Attachment Framework with practical design experience of designers.
75
1. INTRODUCTION
The Attachment Framework is about understanding why users preserve some objects and discard others in the context of interaction design (Odom et al., 2009). As a matter for encouraging sustainable design, there is a critical need to apply the framework from academic research to design practice, to help designers foster the attachment-related thinking, and discover the design aspects of creating long-lasting relationship between users and products. To help product designers to incorporate the Attachment Framework into their design practice, the challenge of how to tailor knowledge from the Attachment Framework into design practitioners' work practice following their needs, design process and requirements therefore needs to be explored and addressed (Remy & Huang, 2014).
Odom, W., Pierce, J., Stolterman, E., & Blevis, E. (2009, April). Understanding why we preserve some things and discard others in the context of interaction design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1053-1062). ACM. Remy, C., & Huang, E. M. (2014). Tailoring Sustainable HCI Design Knowledge to Design Practice. In Position paper in A SIGCHI HCI & Sustainability community workshop at CHI.
76
2. STUDY GOAL AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
SHCI Theory
Interactive Tool: "StickyDesignSpace"
Attachment Framework
Research Question 1 • How does the web-based interactive tool StickyDesignSpace foster attachment-related thinking?
Design Practice
Designers' research process
Research Question 2 • How do designers use this tool as a potential way of doing background research process? • How does the tool fit with design practices? • What values does the tool add to the process?
In order to the address this challenge, the overarching theme of the study is to design, develop and evaluate a webbased interactive tool -- StickyDesignSpace, which enables product designers to embed the Attachment Framework into their design background research process. The study aims to identify the potential influences and insights in integrating the knowledge from Attachment Framework into an interactive tool for designers to use in their design process and practice.
77
3.THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Attachment Framework
Design Space
The attachment framework was first proposed by Odom et al. in 2009. Four attachment categories were identified and defined:
The concept of design space used in this study is originally inspired by Card et al.'s research in 1990. By categorizing the data along a set of dimensions and criteria, a design space helps its readers to develop a holistic understanding of data that were placed in the space from a visual aspect.
Histories; Augmentation; Engagement; Perceived Durability. Gegenbauer and Huang (2012) expanded version of the attachment framework, in which the categories: Earned Functionality; Perceived Worth; Sufficiency were included in the frameworks. The term "Attachment Framework" in this study therefore refers to the extended version of the framework, which includes all 7 attachment categories mentioned above.
An example of design space created by Card et al. that describes taxonomy of input devices.
Gegenbauer, S., & Huang, E. M. (2012, June). Inspiring the design of longer-lived electronics through an understanding of personal attachment. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 635-644). ACM. Card, S. K., Mackinlay, J. D., & Robertson, G. G. (1990, March). The design space of input devices. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 117-124). ACM.
78
4.STUDY METHODS Research through Design (RtD) StageA: Grounding
Affinity Diagram
Transform theory into design principles
StageB: Ideation & Iteration
Paper Prototype Testing
Insights for iteration
StageC: Evaluation & Reflection
User Testing & Interview
Reflection
Grounding: Understand the Attachment Framework by reviewing previous related researches, develop attachment design principles by applying affinity diagram. 7 attachment design principles were summarized as the result of this stage. Ideation and Iteration: Form initial design ideas, test the main function and the high-level interaction, collect and analyze user feedbacks to guide the next design iteration. A high-fidelity prototype of the tool was developed as the result of this stage. Evaluation and Reflection: Evaluate the high-fidelity prototype with real design practitioners, conduct user observations and interviews, collect and analyze qualitative data, document the research findings and insights regarding the proposed research questions.
79
5.1. Stage A: Grounding Affinity Diagram
AUGMENTATION: Unique
Involvement
Personal Useful Interest Creative
Unique
Personal Interest
Involvement
Useful Creative
AUGMENTATION: "The product can be customized and reconfigured according to users' preference"
The affinity diagram and a brainstorming session were adopted to transform one of the attachment categories "Augmentation" into a corresponding design principle. Affinity Diagram method is being applied to translate the abstract definition of attachment categories into descriptive design principles for designers to employ. Step 1: Collected raw data from previous research and presented on different notes, data included the interview results and research findings from previous relevant researches.
Step 2: The notes were grouped. Different themes were identified. Step 3: The identified themes were further developed into corresponding design characteristics. Afterwards, guided by a brainstorming session, an attachment design principle were developed based on the common feature from the summarized design characteristics.
80
Results from Stage A: Data from previous study
81
Attachment Design Principles
" My grandparents sat in it, my parents sat in it, now I am sitting in it, it has meaning to me, it gives us a piece soul. "
The product can hold personal histories or memories
" The words were added by me and my loved ones, it worth so much to me. It's something that I would never give up. "
The product can be customized and reconfigured according to users’ preference
" I enjoy writing with it, I feel more connected to it, it feels more like I am putting myself into what I am making, a more real experience. I will probably have it for the rest of my life."
The product involves users’ physical interaction as part of its functionality
" I don't think I will get rid of it because it can't malfunction, there is very little to go wrong with it. "
The product shows reliable and long lasting quality
" I have two wallets I am still attached to the old one, I know how I use and organize it. The new one has different layout, it would take too much time to adjust to use. So I stayed with the old one. "
The product is easy to be optimized even though it would take significant time to understand the operation
" I wouldn't get rid of it because it is pretty, aesthetic and worth much. "
The product represents a high objective worth to its user even though it loses functionality
" Actually I would like a new one but we still have it, It keeps on serving its purpose by extending its functionality "
The product can be upgraded or renewed to fill a particular need
Results from Stage A (Continued): Histories
Augmentation
Engagement
The product can hold personal histories or memories
The product can be customized and reconfigured according to users' preference
The product involves users' physical interaction as part of its functionality
Perceived Durability
Earned Functionality
Perceived Worth
The product shows reliable and long lasting quality
The product is easy to be optimized even though it would take significant time to learn the operation
The product represents high objective worth to its user even though it loses functionality
Sufficiency The product can be upgraded or renewed to fill a particular need
82
5.2. Stage B: Ideation and Iteration Initial design idea The initial design idea was to create a two-dimensional design space with the 7 attachment design principles presented on horizontal axis and the selective generic product design properties on vertical axis. The expectation was made that designers would select the product design properties and connect them to the attachment design principles in their design background research process.
Paper prototype design and interview A paper prototype made by sticky notes and clay was implemented to test the design idea, 2 design students were recruited to participate the paper prototype testing. Although the participant number was small, but the goal behind the testing and interview was to get feedback about the initial idea of the created design space and how participants interact with it.
83
Results from Stage B: High fidelity online prototype The high fidelity online prototype of StickyDesignSpace was designed based on the insights from grounding stage and the paper prototype testing. The tool includes an introduction page and a tool page.
Introduction page
An introduction video was presented on the webpage.
The descriptive attachment design principles were presented in the background section with illustrated examples.
84
Results from Stage B (Continued): Tool page The design space was constituted by generic design properties on vertical axis and descriptive attachment categories on horizontal axis. The main operations are: • Users can select the design properties in vertical axis. • The seven descriptive attachment design principles are presented on the horizontal axis. When users hover on each of the category, the corresponding illustration would show up. • Users can upload multiple image data or delete particular image data in each of the table cell. The data will be stored in the backend database. • Rows of the table can be added or deleted. • Users can mark particular cell or erase marked colors by using the color marker on the top menu bar.
85
5.3. Stage C: Evaluation & Reflection User testing and interview Who: Four designers were recruited to participate the testing, the participants have one to four years of design related working experience. What: A design theme of designing a consumer electronic product -- a mobile phone was given to participants during the testing. How: The testing was divided into three phases: 1. Walk through the tool in a "think aloud" process. 2. Start organizing the background research data by using the tool. 3. Participate in a semi-structured interview. The whole testing session usually took approximately 45 to 75 minutes.
Analyzing qualitative data: affinity diagram and case study • Qualitative data was organized in a deductive and inductive approach. • Topics such as "objective of design", "background research goal & method", "influence to design process & outcome", "potential benefits & constrains" were employed as pre-determined codes, and worked as an organizational system for debriefing. • Under the frame of codes, similar themes were identified and grouped together through bottom-up grouping. • Combining with the affinity diagram, stories and corresponding quotations worked as evidence to understand the opinions behind participants.
86
6.RESULTS AND ANALYSIS 6.1. The Design Space Created by Participants
87
The design space created by participant1.
The design space created by participant2.
The design space created by participant3.
The design space created by participant4.
6.2. An Overview of Participants' Background Research
Results showed that the four design participants started the background research from different perspectives: Understanding design circumstance: P1 and P2 focused on studying the existing artifacts, synthesizing background research data into a report to achieve an objective understanding of the overall design background. Developing design idea: Compared to P1 and P2, P3 and P4 focused on formulating design idea, developing subjective feeling about product, presenting the idea in prototypes.
Summary of background research process of the design participants
88
6.3. Participants' Notion of the Tool • Helping to organize design data and inspirations into different categories.
• Interpretation of seven descriptive attachment categories: guidelines for creating long-lasting products. "It is to create products that user will use for many years, products that user will not easily throw away."(p2)
"It (the tool) is trying to help designers to organize design inspirations, like design resources."(P4) "With the awareness of these two lines, I upload this picture (Lego phone) into material (row) and preferences (second column). If I can make my own phone with different types of materials, such as bricks or woods, then it can fill my satisfaction of using or my preferences" (P1)
Overall, all the participants viewed the main purpose of tool as organizing and sorting data and inspirations.
89
"They (seven attachment design principles) act like guidelines, you (designers) need to find something that is useable for the users, they are trying to guide you build a good design project." (p4)
The participants' general interpretation of the descriptive attachment categories meets our goal of providing guidelines of creating long-lasting products. Suggestions were that the descriptive attachment design principles can be even briefer to be perceived at one glance.
6.4. Potential Influence to Design Process • Potential use in different design phases to guide long-lasting design Design brainstorming session : "Maybe during brainstorming session we can use this software". (P1)
Design evaluation phase : "I think it can be used for evaluation process to see if I make my design sustainable". (P3)
• Connection between the potential use of the tool and objective of design P1's design practices are usually task or problem oriented. The design background research process is usually fixed.
P3's objective of design is usually for market selling, she needs to consider the creativity and quality of the product.
However, the brainstorming session is relatively open for developing different design solutions. It provides space for applying attachment frameworks to form design ideas.
Therefore, P3 expressed the needs to apply the tool to develop attachment design insights and to check whether the product is sustainable in design evaluation phase.
90
• Expected values and constrains the tool have on design practice Help to reduce time reaching the final design piece "It is like a concept map, so I can locate different things within these axes, and there is also the third dimension which is the photo (image data) itself...When you see the map, you see everything from the head, or from the high above, so now you see how to control within the process." (P3)
Lead to a limitation of creativity in design outcome "I have to spend a lot of time to think about how to match the pictures into categories so I think it is a limitation to my creativity." (P4).
• Connection between the expected value of the tool and design process of participants Prototype Feedback Intuition
Update
Test
Design Ideas
Functionality Design
Prototype Design
Design Ideas
P3 usually perform the above design process to iterate the design. The tool thus provides a space for P3 to store background research results and ideas following the Attachment Frameworks, and works as a guideline to develop design ideas.
91
User Needs
As for the design process of P4, there is no space to put the user research results into the tool, therefore using this tool in background research process would be unnecessary for proceeding the design.
7.CONCLUSION Result shows that the design participants welcomed to use the tool in their work practice as the tool provides the function of background research data organization, which meets their needs in the background research process. Furthermore, the participants expressed their interests to apply the attachment design principles in their design practices as the design principles work as guidelines to create products that user would get attached to. It can be concluded that by providing design space for participants to organize background research data and develop bullet design ideas, the tool promoted the attachment design knowledge transformation by connecting design background research process and the design idea formulation process.
92
THANKS
93
Wanjun Chu Tel: (0046)-0765646188 Email: chuwanjun525@gmail.com