Master thesis of Youran You

Thesis for master degree of IT Product Design 2014

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE? Merging Product Design and Design Ethnography Through Experiential and Visionary Design Artefacts YOURAN YOU MS c

in

U niversity

IT P roduct D esign of S outhern D enmark M ay 2014

S upervisor : L aurens B oer

Thesis for master degree of IT Product Design

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE? MERGING PRODUCT DESIGN AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL AND VISIONARY DESIGN ARTEFACTS Author

Youran You

Supervisor

Laurens Boer

MSc in IT Product Design University of Southern Denmark May 2014

A B ST R AC T

In this thesis I will present a design research practice that combined product design and design ethnographically inspired fieldwork for an airport luggage handling trolley project. Initial studies for exploring the design context and gaining design requirements were composed by Value Network Mapping, desk research, field observation and interview. Based on the results from the initial research, three artefacts were designed - an interactive application on a tablet connected to a luggage handling trolley, a near-future folded storyboard pamphlet and a set of farfuture vision cards. The purpose was through designing the interactive application prototype to test information architecture and usability, through the near-future storyboard to provoke participants’ desirability and wishes, through the vision cards to open up participants’ imagination and speculate the possible futuristic use practice.

Inside CPH Airport transit area - the context of where the trolley is being used, design activities with passengers engagement were conducted. The engagement structure was adapted to the situated ethnographic inquiry practice. The discussing order of the three design artefacts started from concrete and experiential artefact to abstract and imaginative artefact, or the reverse, gave the experiment another influential layer.

From the analysis of the field research findings, I will argue how do design ethnography and product design support each other in this case. I will articulate how: • Different qualities of artefacts and the order of discussing design artefacts (from concrete to the abstract / from abstract to concrete) influence user engagement; • The re-framing between design practice and use practice shapes my role as a product design researcher.

I will discuss how practitioners in the interaction design and ethnography field could use the inspiration from this work to achieve effective design goal for now and for the future.

TABL E OF CO NT EN T

1 INTRODUCTION

2

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

6

2.1 User involvement and design artefacts

6

8

2.2 Product design and design ethnography

3 RESEARCH CHALLENGES AND APPROACHES

10

3.1 Project and research challenges

10

3.2 Methods

10

3.3 Research phases

11

4 INITIAL STUDIES

14

5 DESIGNING ARTEFACTS

18

5.1 Designing the application prototype

19

5.2 Designing the fictional scenario

20

6 FIELDWORK WITH DESIGN ARTEFACTS

23

6.1 Conducting ethnographically inspired field research

23

6.2 Sharing stories & Offering suggestions

24

26

6.3 Brief concept evaluation

7 RESULTS AND FINDINGS

28

7.1 The performance of design artefacts in the fieldwork

28

7.2 The role of a product design researcher

35

CONCLUSION

38

DISCUSSION

39

REFERENCES

40

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

43

1

INTR O DUC T I O N

Project

contex t

With the booming of civil aviation nowadays, airports have become a key section in a traveller’s journey. However, much research has shown that the journey inside airports is often not satisfying. Amadeus, a travel consultant agency, found out that the three main areas representing passenger dissatisfaction during air travels are: service disruptions, long check-in lines and baggage issues (Amadeus, 2011).

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To optimise the service through security check until boarding, Navigaid, a three-years project within the cooperation between multiple stakeholders in design, technology, service and aviation area, is developing a new airport luggage handling trolley with a tablet embedded (See Figure 1). The system on the tablet will guide passengers through the security to the gate.

While at the security, the trolley with all the cabin luggage goes through an X-ray scanning machine, the passenger goes through another body-checking passage. This new procedure is aiming at reducing passengers’ irritation and stress by informing the Figure 1 The trolley concept regulations in advance through this handy system, as well as improving the efficiency of airport security management and creating potential revenue increase. In this project, the passengers are referred to as both customers and users, since they are the ones who are supposed to use the trolleys and potentially shop through the system guides. CPH Airport is the main stakeholder who will manage the trolley system and gain interests from it. CPH Inventures and Triagonal as the two companies entitled for product-system design in this project Navigaid, cooperated with me to conduct part of the research and gave some feedback on design practice. My design agenda is then on the interaction design between passengers and this new trolley, especially in terms of software system.

Fuzzy front end is a phase often appears in the beginning of product and service development. It is the messy stage beginning at when the team has an idea until they start to implement the idea (Alam, 2006). Alam proposes that an effective approach to deal with the fuzzy front end is stressing on customer interaction, which is an important external information source in new product or service design. By adopting a customer-oriented approach, designers can gain insights of how customers experience the product or service in certain contexts.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

Belliveau, Griffin, and Somermeyer (2002) refer ethnographic inquiry as “a descriptive, qualitative market research methodology for studying the customer in relation to his or her environment. Researchers spend time in the field observing customers and their environment to acquire a deep understanding of customers’ lifestyles or cultures as a basis for better understanding their needs and problems”(p. 442).

The data gathered through ethnographic inquiry will reflect customers’ intuition based on the product, revealing their attitudes, values, and needs. This open-ended approach prompts customers’ memory of salient aspects of the product. Product designers thus can create a product that resonates with the customer’s personality, taste, and lifestyle (Rosenthal & Capper, 2006).

In industrial realm, product development is usually limited by funds, market, technology, contract period, etc. However, only constraining the design scope within the limitations would possibly lead to a biased design that is lack of considerations about potential and alternatives from user perspective. The design team could grasp more opportunities during fuzzy front end to generalise concepts and gather insights from customers through open-ended approaches beyond limitations. As a core interface towards passengers, this tablet system required both practicability and sustainability. The dilemma between concepts developing and screening led the design work towards ethnographic approach to conduct field research, in order to get a better understanding of customers’ needs and problems. It is noteworthy that instead of developing a system that can be feasibly used in the “front line” in the airport, the aim of my design practice was about making sense of the product in the specific service context and improving passenger’s experience through this system.

On the one hand, while facing manifold potential features, empirical screening based on subjective design experiences is not valid amply. On the other hand, even if designing a product exactly according to the design brief, will the traditional product design process (i.e. design-prototyping-testing) lead to a satisfying and successful product?

Thus, an idea came into shape of designing artefacts that varied from concrete to visionary in terms of quality and based on different time-span, to bring them to the field to gain users’ insights. The details of how I designed the artefacts and conducted fieldwork will be presented in the following sections.

During the design and field research, many doubts emerged. Thus my main research questions were composed in this thesis that I aimed at answering: 1. How can designers use different design artefacts to engage users in product development process?

• How do qualities of design artefacts influence user engagement?

• How does the order of discussing design artefacts (from concrete to the abstract / from abstract to concrete) influence user engagement?

MERGING PRODUCT DESIGN AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL AND VISIONARY DESIGN ARTEFACTS

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2. How can product development and ethnographically inspired fieldwork be performed to support each other?

• How does this blend of approaches influence product design?

• How should I position myself between the two approaches?

Key

t e r ms c l a r i f i c at i o n

Design ethnography as a particular kind of sociologically derived ethnography within the tradition of ethnomethodology, is often used in the initial phase of design projects to gather empirical data. Through ethnographic methods the design team could have a better understanding of user habits and preferences. In turn, it “supports the broader research endeavour, the development of abstract design concepts, and the exploration of the social application of new technologies” (Crabtree & Rodden, 2002).

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However, ethnography is regarded as a relatively passive approach, which means no active user engagement is involved. For learning and understanding users quickly, more participatory techniques will help to get the core of what they need and want.

Participatory design is a movement arose in Scandinavia. It had an global impact on design field aiming to involve each stakeholder’s perspective in design activities.

Design ethnography associated with participatory design makes the complexity of social activities more apprehensible for HCI practitioners (Dourish, 2006). Instead of spending a lot of time to observe and shadow user behaviours, which often will give a bunch of rich data that is hard to analyse, I employed field research inspired by participatory-based design ethnography.

The term design artefacts is used to denote “boundary objects” that “mediate across heterogeneity” and in that way “tie different communities of practice together” (Bertelsen, 2000; Star, 1989). It has the “physical nature of persistence” as well as refers to “a deliberate and purposeful creation by human hands” (Mogensen,1994).

Unlike “design things” (Koskinen et al, 2011), whose role is to keep people focusing on design, design artefacts as a representation of ethnographic tool are the open-ended provocation media in the field research. It’s a carrier of design possibilities, and a communicational tool to provoke users of their hopes and fears through its concept or interaction details. Furthermore, design artefacts can call expertness among the participants (Laufer 1996). It builds a bridge between design team and users to share the story and knowledge.

The experiential and visionary design artefacts indicated that the content of design differentiated from temporal and technological aspects. I designed a set of artefacts composed of a realistic and concrete prototype that could be implemented for the present product, a scenario-based storyboard that indicated the airport services in

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

10 years, and a set of vision-led collage that speculated science fictional technologies supported services in 50 years. Differentiated in scope and quality, however, the concoction in content made these artefacts shaped as an entirety of product-service system representation.

Thesis

st r u c t u r e

In Chapter 2 - Literature Review, I will introduce an overview of related work regarding user involvement and its practice via design artefacts, and the tension and dilemma of merging product design and design ethnography.

In Chapter 3 - Research Challenges and Approaches, I will focus on the opportunities and challenges related to combining ethnography and product design. I will illustrate my research process and choices in terms of methods: initial studies, using scenarios in design, using different design artefacts to engage passengers, and brief concept evaluation.

In Chapter 4 - Initial Studies, I will present the pilot field research and the findings. I will show how I gained knowledge of design context and requirements for artefact design.

In Chapter 5 - Designing Artefacts, I will present the design process of the three artefacts.

In Chapter 6 - Fieldwork With Design Artefacts, I will focus on the structure of the ethnographically inspired field research, and the feedback gained from participants.

I will also discuss the concept evaluation work and the company’s feedback.

In Chapter 7 - Results and Findings, I will analyse the fieldwork data and demonstrate how different artefacts influence user engagement in terms of qualities and order of discussing. I will also discuss some other lessons learnt in the fieldwork and my role of being a product design researcher between use practice and design practice.

Finally, I will discuss limits of the research, and opportunities for further work.

Contributions Through exploration of applying design anthropology on product design via design artefacts, the role of the practitioner is not simply serving design or ethnography, but rather a provocateur and facilitator. By positioning such a blurring role among the design field and elaborating the tension in between, it would hopefully enlighten other practitioners.

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2

L ITERAT URE REVI EW

2 . 1 U SE R I N VO LV E M E N T A ND D ESIGN ARTEFACTS User

i n v o lv e m e n t i n d i f f e r e n t p r o d u c t d e s i g n r e a lms

Involving users in the design process has been a tradition in innovated product/system/ service design disciplines. To bridge the gap between the designers’ perspective and end-users’ real needs and preferences, user-involved design activities are valued to push innovation towards a better understanding of market place (Cooper 1999; Panne et al. 2003). In practice, the approaches of doing user involvement could be applied in user-centred design, participatory design, ethnography, and contextual design (Kujala, 2003).

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User-centred design initially primarily aimed at developing products with high usability. The main design stages that involved users in user-centred design thus is gaining user requirements and usability testing.

Participatory design (or some called cooperative design) emphasises democratic values for each member in workplaces. Both individual and organizational needs are supported through analysing the organizational requirements and planning appropriate social and technical structures (Kujala, 2003). Here end-users are not only regarded as a direct value input for designers, but also together with other stakeholders that involved in the project (employees, partners, customers, etc.) participate in facilitating their own knowledge and views.

In ethnographic field in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and HCI, user involvement is often practiced to gain “member’s point of view” and experience.

More importantly, it explicates usage context while in some occasions that is hard to be articulated by users (Blomberg et al.,1993). It’s linked to design by facilitating knowledge of social aspects of work from observation and analysis of user behaviour in natural context (Kujala, 2003). Ethnomethodologically informed design is another method from sociological perspective to theorize its subjects. It develops an understanding of work and organisations from situated work and interactions through fieldwork investigation (Dourish & Button,1998).

Contextual design is a work-flow-oriented approach to study how people work in their daily environment, usually done by one user at a time. It aims at translating the knowledge of present situation into product requirements for the future (Steen et al., 2007).

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

Design

a r t e fa c ts a n d i ts u s e i n u s e r e n g a g e m e n t

Among those user involvement design approaches, Buur and Sitorus (2007) regard ethnography as a provocation tool from a design activities embedded view “to provoke engineers to re-frame their perception of new design”. From this point of view, ethnography is not a separated discipline linked to design anymore, but integrated and embodied in the provocative design process. An ethnographer, in this manner, is not only a design informer, but also as a facilitator to engage organisations into the ethnographic material analysis and a provocateur for related organisations to rethink the problems and solutions. Buur and Sitorus presented a Configuration Technologies research project in which they used a mock-up of physical configuration to discuss with technicians so they can rethink software solutions and the relationship between the technology and practice (See Figure 2).

The mock-up Buur and Figure 2 Technicians discuss how they see configuration parameters Sitorus describe in the triggered by an imaginative design mock-up (Buur and Sitorus, 2007) configuration project helped focus the discussion on particular issues and provoked certain themes to surface in the dialogue, which is referred to as ‘provotypes’ (Mogensen, 1994). Their artefact mediates the exchanges of understanding and perspectives between engineers and designers, which as an ethnographic material can “help these practitioners expose, exchange and re-frame their understandings” about use practice.

So what is the nature of design artefacts? Olav W. Bertelsen (1998) in his Ph.D. thesis defines design artefacts as following: • Design artefacts mediate the three functional dimensions of design (construction, communications, and conception).

• Design artefacts have the double characters of mediating technical construction and representation; being tools and signs, having meaning and sense.

• Design artefacts are boundary objects: a) tying the activity systems involved in a project together, b) tying different rooms of design and use together.

Here design artefacts are used to balance between over-reality and over-conceptualised in research. For design ethnographic research, we could borrow this epistemology and transplant to designing tangible artefacts as “probes”, which refers to as a tool to discover knowledge beyond outset assumptions. Also, for the “boundary”

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nature, ambiguity could support evocation of the relationship between technology and people out of limitations (Gaver et al, 2003). Ambiguous and boundary design artefacts in this manner are not meaningless poor designs. Instead, they touch upon the border between reality and virtuality. They re-frame the information of artefact itself to impel questioning, the context of technology usage and the relationship between people and objects (Gaver et al, 2003).

Gaver, Dunne and Pacenti (1999) developed Cultural Probes, which are informationgathering packages to gain intimate insights of participants’ experiences while the designers remain as discrete as possible. This user engagement is situated in transforming people’s lives instead of designating certain knowledge of use practice.

In Wright & McCarthy’s (2008) analysis about empathy in HCI, Jayne Wallace adapted Cultural Probes to a technique for more direct dialogue with participants.

The design artefacts (digital jewellery) are used as resources for co-situated conversations between her and the participants.

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Since this trolley project has a lucid product usage context, the focus of doing ethnographic research will be on gaining knowledge of user behaviours in that specific context, which is how and when people would use this type of guiding system in the airport. However, other objective and subjective factors could also relate to the usage of this system, such as airport interior atmosphere, travel purpose and frequency, purchasing habits, etc. Thus the focal point during research should also be adjusted depending on the ongoing activity results. Also, design research initiation would be altered and maintained to handle contingencies.

2. 2 PRO D U C T DE S IG N A N D D E S IGN ETH NOGRAP H Y The

t e n s i o n a n d b o n d b e t w e e n t w o d i s c i pl i n e s

Both two design disciplines product design and design ethnography have their own traditional origins and have been developed to mature industrial practicing paths.

Design ethnography or design anthropology is employed in many large corporations to avoid taken-for-granted “conceptualisations of products, services, technology, users and use” (Suchman, 1987; Blomberg et al., 1993; Anderson, 1994; Crabtree, 2003; Nafus and Anderson, 2006) by staying in “an account of an exotic foreign mindset” (Buur & Matthews, 2008). While product design (human-computer interaction design specifically in this case) is a problem-solving process and aims at providing certain experiences, services or functions. It has basically clear requirements from the beginning and uses product prototypes to gain users’ feedback.

Normally ethnographic research consumes huge cost and protracted time. Kujala (2003) pointed out the hinder aspects of involving users: the overwhelming amount of raw

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

data collected; the difficulty in impacting design; the difficulty gaining direct access to customers; the time spent on studies, communication and management of large amounts of data; users requesting changes to their system. Hughes, King, Rodden and Andersen (1995) introduce a “concurrent ethnography” in their former air traffic control (ATC) research. They use lengthy ethnographic study to understand ATC fieldwork and then develop a system prototype. For less bounded domains, they propose a “Quick and dirty” ethnographic method in order to generate a more systematic and clear-stated ethnographic approach. It moves ethnographic research towards a more usable form by “gathering valuable knowledge of social organization of a large-scale work setting in a relatively short space of time”.

Derived from this, rapid ethnography is a fast iterative way to make ethnographic observation and apply it to design work. To implement rapid ethnography in field research, Millen comes up with three principles (Millen, 2000): • Narrow down the focus of the field research appropriately before entering the field.

Zoom in on the important activities and use key informants such as community guides or liminal group members.

• Use multiple interactive observation techniques to increase the likelihood of discovering exceptional and useful user behaviour.

• Use collaborative and computerised iterative data analysis methods.

Similarly, Crabtree and Rodden elucidate three ways to implement ethnography in the system development (Crabtree & Rodden, 2002): identify researchable topics in the on-going study; develop abstract design ideas; employ studies to novel technologies by evaluating the social application of innovative technological research. They broadened the definition of ethnographic work employed in system development to challenge the traditional product-oriented design.

The review shows how design artefacts can work with user involvement and how ethnographic work in product development offers a multifaceted and fluffy set of issues for researchers. Collectively, these studies supported my research background, and provided important insights into extending the exploration of combining design ethnography and product design through artefacts. The intention is to relate these theories and practices to the interdisciplinary role of being a design researcher at the product’s fuzzy front end phase, and to draw implications for doing design together with ethnographically inspired fieldwork, in an endeavour to understand what are the opportunities for design and how artefacts could be used to support design ethnography.

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R ESE ARC H C H AL L EN G E S A N D A P P R OAC HE S

3 . 1 PROJ E C T A N D R E S E A R C H CH ALLENGES As described in the previous chapter, positioning, adapting and leveraging design ethnography/anthropology in product development process has been the focus of many innovation practitioners. Nevertheless, investigating the combination of doing design ethnography and product design in this project context poses some challenges for me as the designer and the researcher.

While considering solving the dilemma of leveraging ethnographic research with interaction design in this product development process, it’s important to choose appropriate tools and techniques for collaboration with users, which after all should be serviced for contribution to the final goal of informing design from organisational perspective. Which approach to choose, how to integrate user involvement and design, are depending on the perspective of the relationship between the product/ service and users.

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A second challenge is the specific pragmatic context of doing this research. Ethnography normally is conducted in natural setting, observed by ethnographers. Airport as the natural use context is a highly secured public place. Thus it has already excluded group inquiry activities such as co-design workshop. In addition, the users all have the same goal to achieve inside airport, which is boarding on time smoothly. And the trolley is expected to be brought into use before passengers enter the security, which is not able to be followed by the researcher. Plus the legal issue of conducting ethnographic research in airport (the airport preferred not approaching passengers excessively, no filming is allowed, etc.) makes doing active user engagement in natural settings extremely difficult.

3 . 2 M E THO D S These challenges drove me to ground the questions in explorative research via searching for appropriate methods from both design tradition and innovated inspiration.

Initial

st u d i e s

As for taking in the design agenda in the mid-term of the fuzzy front end, I conducted four types of explorative research to have a holistic view of background for concept development and interaction design.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

• Value Network Mapping: to get a view on all the involved stakeholders and value exchange between them • Desk research: to gather and to analyse existing empirical data • Field Observations: to study the present signage arrangement • Interview: to know about passengers’ purchasing behaviours

Using

scenarios in design

For conducting user engagement in iterative design process, Bødker (2000) states that it is important to “consider means for creating trial use situations” to “stage users’ hands-on experience with the future”. An innovative and interactive technique he suggests is using scenarios to anchor specific work/use situations in reflection and action. Through scenarios designers could present and situate solutions, illustrate alternative solutions and identify potential problems. Scenarios-based design could evoke invisible problems and reflect design concepts in the context of doing design (Cross, 2001). Thus scenarios as a fictional resource for design could use artefacts as the “stage” to convey contents.

Using

d i f f e r e n t d e s i g n a r t e fa c ts to e n g a g e pa ss e n g e r s

Design artefacts are regarded as communication tools for ethnographic research to engage potential users. In the previous chapter, some cases for combining artefacts and participatory approach has been introduced. In this research, exploration will be towards user engagement through experiential and visionary artefacts to re-frame the use practice and to impel questioning. In this manner, ethnographic research is not only presented through thick description, but also using tangible form relating to the product. In order to make participants better relating to the use context, the engagement were conducted inside the airport, where the passengers are the “real” users.

Brief

c o n c e pt e va l u at i o n

The main concepts appearing in the design artefacts were listed with corresponding user reviews and feedback as ethnographic evidences. Combining the practical pros and cons, and use practice context, each concept was individualised for further analysis.

This deliverable to the company to some extent is seen as a tangible contribution to the bond of ethnography and industrialized design from organizational perspective. It bridged the gap between end-users and the design team.

3 . 3 RE SE A R C H P H A S E S As the illustration in Figure 3, I ran the research process through the following steps:

MERGING PRODUCT DESIGN AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL AND VISIONARY DESIGN ARTEFACTS

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Figure 3 Research phases

1. Initial studies Composed by Value Network Mapping, desk research, field observation, interview, the initial studies explored from different scopes to encompass the background of present service context, the value chain and user behaviour.

2. Designing artefacts For the present design agenda, an application prototype on the tablet embedded in the luggage-handling trolley was designed according to the original design requirements. But apart from catering the outset locus, a storyboard pamphlet used near-future technological scenarios and a set of far-future vision cards were designed for further field research.

3. Ethnographically inspired fieldwork By bringing the three design artefacts to the users inside the airport with the design artefacts, the designer could fulfil the usability testing, provoke users’ desirability and wishes, and speculate the future’s services.

4. Brief concept evaluation The concept evaluation listed the main concepts appeared in the design artefacts and quoted relevant user feedback. Thus the design team could have an overview of the pros and cons of each concept while combining ethnographic data in the mean time.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

5. Analysis the research results and findings Based on the results, I drew an analysis about how design artefacts influenced user engagement in fieldwork. Also, findings were concluded on how different design artefacts’ quality and the order of storytelling from the time dimension impacted on participants, as well as the tension between design practice and use practice from the researcher’s perspective.

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MERGING PRODUCT DESIGN AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL AND VISIONARY DESIGN ARTEFACTS

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INITI AL S T UDI ES

V a l u e N e t w o r k M a pp i n g The airport runs within many stakeholders’ cooperation and value exchange. To sort out the values chain that could be improved to enhance passengers’ experience, a mapping of key values including tangible and intangible between each stakeholder would be of assistance. Value Network Mapping is a method to reconfigure business model and understand the value exchange between stakeholders. It specifies all the tangible, knowledge and intangible key value in an ecosystem (Allee, 2000).

In Figure 4, each green circle represents a stakeholder. The brown solid arrows indicate tangible value flow including goods, services, and revenues. The black dash arrows are intangible value flows, such as experiences, loyalty and branding. The green arrows are the knowledge exchanges, here are information obtaining approaches.

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From the mapping, there are mainly four stakeholders influencing passengers’ experience in the airport: airport; service providers; shops; airlines. The implement of luggage handling trolley with an informative system would change the value flow of boarding and sales information from the scattered stakeholder-topassenger to iNavigaid-to-passenger. On the other hand, passengers’ information is

Figure 4 Value Network Mapping of Airport Services

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

not only controlled by the airlines anymore. Instead, airport would access to the data of passengers so they could analyse and optimise the services further on. Among all the value inputs to passengers, the information about boarding is the most significant role in influencing passengers’ experience in an airport. Apart from that, invisible additional values such as attachment to the airport, delightful shopping experiences could be fulfilled through the system as well.

Desk

research

The design team made 400 surveys through the Internet and 57 Interviews in CPH Airport and Keflavik Airport beforehand.

Questionnaires were employed to gather empirical data of passengers’ experience in airports. In the findings, they related emotions with gender, age, travel frequency, etc. In the interviews they were focusing on the use of trolleys and general user behaviour in the transit area.

Figure 5 A data visualisation of survey results

Based on the former research results, I generated some insights from KJ Method (Kawakita, 1975) as some implication for the focus of system design.

1. Passengers are very cautious about their boarding time and gate. Some go straight to the gate to be reassured.

2. Many people don’t have the habit to use luggage-handling trolley, some think it costs money to take one.

3. Many people only buy a drink to kill time.

4. People have the social needs while waiting.

5. Business travellers tend to find a working place or a lounge.

6. Foreign travellers tend to spend their last Danish kroner before they leave the country.

These implications contributed to the design inspiration and requirements in the later-on prototype design, such as offering a friendly start page, adding some social features, and providing facilities information.

Field

o bs e r vat i o n

For capturing relevant visual accounts as the ethnographic research background, I conducted some observation work inside the transit area to collect touchpoints (i.e. the places that interaction happens between users and service) evidences for wayfinding.

During the observation, many passengers had to sit close to the information screen or even to stand waiting for information changes (i.e. watch out for gate number and

MERGING PRODUCT DESIGN AND DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL AND VISIONARY DESIGN ARTEFACTS

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Figure 6 Field observation

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opening time). Some restaurants had information screens inside, but they were too small for seats far from it. Only one information desk was located in the centre of the transit area and the employee was not always there at service. The signage in CPH airport was clear, but since it had fixed hanging spots, in some occasions it was hard to find and follow. Those findings led digital signage design to a particular focus for enhancing passengers’ way-finding knowledge and experience.

Interviews

for discovery

I conducted interviews inside the design company with employees who had all been traveling through different airports for times, to develop an understanding of their traveling experience in different airports‘ transit area compared to CPH Airport.

Since part of the design requirements is to motivate passengers to purchase more, the interviews were also about the understanding of users’ shopping behaviours inside airports in general. Five semi-structured interviews including four individual interviews and a group of three (the purpose was to let them inspire and discuss with each other) were conducted in an office.

I asked around ten questions in each interview, which covered their general experiences and purchasing preferences in the transit area. Some interviewees conveyed their opinions that the shops in most international airports were luxurious, which was unfitting for the majority of the passengers consuming abilities. Price was ranked at the top factor that influenced purchasing options. Boarding information was considered as the most important thing among other activities. When discussing about gaining personal data for intelligent services, most interviewees conveyed they preferred to choose what data to offer by themselves.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

The design requirements were gathered through the interviews, such as offering elaborate information about shops inside the airport especially discount offers, displaying boarding information constantly, obtaining data from passengers through an unintrusive manner.

Design Requirements

Methods

Real-time updated personal boarding info

Desk research, Field obser vation, Inter view

Friendly star ting inter face

Desk research

Social needs

Desk research

Facilities info

Desk research

Access to airpor t employees

Field obser vation

Offering discount info

Inter view

Protected personal data

Inter view

Personalized shopping guides

Inter view, Value Network Mapping

Table 1 Design requirements gained from different method in innitial studies

The initial studies composed by Value Network Mapping, desk research, field observation and interview offered a holistic view of design context and brief, as well as detailed insights for the following system design. The requirements gained from this initial research is listed in Table 1.

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D ESI GNI N G ART EFAC T S

Figure 7 Design plan

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The former explorative studies offered insights for the design agenda, but in the mean time some ideal concepts through ideation couldn’t fit in the present project development process, due to limitations such as length of period, funding, technology and so on. On the other hand, although tasked as an interaction designer for the trolley embedded system, the work of designing a usable and useful product didn’t reveal the human aspect of perceiving such an intervention. Thus for pursuing a more “ethnographically informed design”, I decided to go beyond usability engineer scope, using ethnography and design visions to plump design work and to extend the scope for future contexts.

Through breaching beyond the limitation of project period and technology, I proposed a chronological frame composed by three types of artefacts: the present, near-future(10 years) and far-future(50 years). The present artefact is a tablet system prototype installed in a luggage handling trolley, which would be designed according to the realistic statues quo. It aimed at testing usability of the interactive guiding system.

The near-future artefact is a storyboard pamphlet with specific service touchpoint zoom-in on each page. It aimed at provoking people’s desirability and wishes. The far-future artefact is a set of science-fictional collage that related to potential airport services. This was about opening up people’s imagination and speculating the future scenarios together with the researcher.

On the other hand, the time-span and forms of the artefacts differentiate their attributes and qualities. This also means that presenting them in different orders has the possibility to make influences on participants’ perception of the product and concepts. Thus the storytelling order from concrete application prototype to abstract DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

vision concepts or the reverse created another layer for research.

5 . 1 D E SI GN ING T H E A P P L IC AT ION P ROTOT YP E According to the company’s requirements, a seven-inch tablet Samsung Galaxy Note was considered as the tangible carrier of this guiding system on luggage handling trolley. Thus the system interaction design was based on this specific media and hardware size.

I n f o r m at i o n A r c h i t e c t u r e The basic user activities while using this system could be defined as the following steps, combined with related requirements (See flowchart in Appendix 1): 1. Brief welcoming and introduction of the system usage.

2. Passenger scan boarding passes.

3. Based on the user’s nationality, it offers corresponding language options for using the system.

4. A short instruction film illustrates the procedure and cautions of passing security. In the mean time, a boarding information bar will be always on the top of the screen to show time, flight information, location so those most important things could be known at anytime anywhere.

5. An interactive map could provide passengers with informative circumstances by the hand.

It is worth mentioning that inspired by Virgin Airline’s seat-to-seat chat service on board, a location-based social application between strangers was included in the design though not in the company’s requirements. The rationale of this is for the lack of social features in the airport, especially for single travellers. This trolley-to-trolley talk application will be the tool to ice-break and connect with others in the same location within arms reach.

6. After using the trolley, the user will be able to log out from the account.

P r otot y p i n g The prototype of the system started from building wireframes in Axure. Every step of interaction was elaborated so it could generate the interactive application very fast as well as remain easy to modify and iterate.

Considered the screen should be easy to use for users with different body shapes and position, the physical height and angle should be adjustable. To simulate this, I made a tablet flexible support that can be clipped on trolley’s handle (See Figure 8). So the tablet’s position can be bended and rotated to adjust to the most comfortable angle for the users.

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Figure 8 Prototyping: Axure wireframe (topleft); Interactive application (bottom-left); Phisical connection (right)

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The wireframe was generated to an interactive web page (can be retrieved from http:// doreenyou.me/inavigaid/) and transplanted to the tablet browser, so the software prototype worked as high-fidelity but not fully functional. Oral explanation thus replaced the malfunctioned parts.

5 . 2 D E SI GN ING T H E F IC T IO NA L SCENARIO Scenario as a useful interactive system method is both concrete and flexible. It enables designers presenting the concept through concrete materials such as sketches and collages. Also it is agile and inexpensive to alter the design or deter some details.

Through using fictional scenarios, I intended to raise topics and evoke discussion in the user participation without limitations of technology, and to explore broader possibilities and deeper thoughts for technology.

Near-future

sto r y b o a r d

Storyboard that derived from the cinematographic tradition allows designers to sketch out design concepts early in the development process. For illustrating the future possibilities of product development, I made some sketches of scenarios as a media to discuss with design stakeholders and co-explore with users. Through sketching,

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

the designer could better nail down design ideas.

As for audiences, sketches help to understand service flow, scale, form, and how to interact with the concept (Koskinen, 2011).

The storyboard was made into a hand-drawing foldable pamphlet (see Figure 9 and Appendix 2). On each page it shows a scene created for an airport service related to the luggage handling trolley with a system interface zoom-in.

The theme of this storyboard surrounds four main stages during using the trolley: identification, passing security, transition, and boarding. The technologies used here are well-known today, such as fingerprint identification, X-ray Figure 9 The storyboard pamphlet scanning, auto-drive and so on, so audiences could relate to their “real life”. The storyboard booklet is fold-able, expandable, so each scene would be presented one by one and an overview would be expanded at the last.

This open-ended design allowed advanced technology without limitations of realistic resources in design concept development. It enabled co-exploration and co-creation of the system and service feature.

At last, I made the near-future scenario on storyboard as following: “ A passenger enters CPH airport with a cabin luggage. He takes a luggage handling trolley. He puts his finger on the screen. It shows his preferred language English. He puts all the liquids including his daily cleaning vials in the segmentation of trolley, as well as his electric products including a laptop and a cell phone. In the mean time, he finds out his cell phone is out of power, so he puts his cell phone on the embedded charger in the trolley segmentation. Then he puts his cabin luggage in the bottom of the trolley.

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The luggage moves inside on the belt to be scanned thoroughly. The trolley recognises a pair of scissors in the luggage, which is not allowed to be brought on board. So it reports on the screen and spits out the luggage for him to re-organize. After he sends this item to the temporary storage locker, he passes the security check easily. In the transition area, the trolley knows he is going back to his hometown. It offers some Danish specialty as butter cookies and Lego kits, because the trolley knows from his Facebook that his sister loves butter cookies and he has a 3-years-old nephew. After shopping, he still has time, so he checks on the trolley of the nearby passengers. He finds a charming Danish lady who likes same music band as him so he begins to chat with her. They exchange Facebook and make an appointment to go to a concert together after he comes back. Now he needs to go to the gate so he chooses auto-drive of the trolley. The trolley brings him to the gate automatically. “

Vision

cards

For opening participants’ imagination and co-generate ideas between the researcher and participants, I made a set of vision cards as a far-future design artefact. The vision cards is a set of 12 scenes collage. Each scene has a line of explanation below (See Appendix 3). It intended to bring participants to the fictitious world and give them the possibility to speculate a futuristic airport in 50 years. Each card is independent in terms of content.

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The content on the cards were from science fictional films, articles, etc. Each one is related to a certain aspect of airport services. Some are holistic views of the airport, such as a futuristic airport built on the top of a skyscraper. Some are procedures in the airport, such as navigating to the gate. The detached scenes created a disorder, an ambiguity. And this disorder and ambiguity made the design engaging and thought-provoking (Gaver et al., 2003).

Figure 10 Vision cards

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6

F IELDWO RK WI T H D E SIG N A R T E FAC T S

The user study was done inside the transition area in the airport. By bringing the design to the “real context”, the participants could relate their on-going journey with the design. At last, 15 interviews including 12 individual interviews and three group interviews were carried out in eight days. The ages of participants ranged from 23-55 years, with gender equivalence in consideration. Normally passengers didn’t have a long time to participate in the study, so one interview on average lasted for 1520 minutes. Due to the regulations of conducting user research inside CPH airport with filming not being allowed, all the data were collected through audio recording together with a few pictures.

6 . 1 C o n d u c t i n g e t h n o g r a p h i c a lly i n sp i r e d f i e l d r e s e a r c h The approach of doing ethnography was iterated through action and reflection.

Continuous adjustment were made in ethnographic inquiry according to the responses received and the need of the research. At first, it was straightforward inquiry of design artefacts without buffering: after introducing my research purpose, I presented mere three design artefacts directly. After several sessions, many inert responses emerged, thus an urge of obtaining informants’ personal traveling experiences would help to know about their world-view and preferences. Hence, I prepared some questions about their present traveling experiences, the first flight in their life, and what would be the perfect journey in their mind. However, it seemed oral discussion was not ample detailed and didn’t serve well for triggering memories. Thereupon I made a journey map (Ser vicedesigntools.org, 2014) and provided it for the participants as a self-documentation, so they could write down the details of their journey at each touchpoint (See Appendix 4). Usually the journey map is done among the design/research team, but here I used it as an inquiry tool at the beginning for participants to recall their journey from leaving home to waiting for boarding. Thus the holistic service could be related to the later-on sessions.

At last, the semi-structure of the interviews was generally following the steps: 1. Introduce the research purpose 2. Get information of the present travel 3. Engage informants in the three design artefacts session 4. Go in depth if needed and permitted An extensional deficiency during the interviews was that participants often worried about their flights at the same time. It induced their distraction and restricted potential to open up topics. Two participants didn’t even have enough time to finish the whole session.

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Since the design artefacts were different in manifestation and time-span - ranging from realistic and concrete, to futuristic and imaginative, an auxiliary exploration was to experiment how would different orders of presenting the artefacts influence user engagement. Thus nine interviews were conducted by starting from the tablet system prototype, then the storyboard pamphlet and ending with vision cards, and six interviews were in the reverse order. In this way, participants might perceive the concepts and design goal in distinct angle, which would dominate their performances in the interview.

6 . 2 S h a r i n g sto r i e s & O f f e r i n g s u g g e st i o n s The feedback from participants were clustered into two types: story sharing and suggestions offering. When they shared their own stories or stories they had heard and seen from others, they revealed their values, preferences for ethnographic research. When they were offering suggestions, they made their statements and created possible alternatives for the product. However, it was not like suggestions for the product only occurred in prototype test, or only story sharing in scenarios.

Instead, they were interwoven throughout the whole conversation.

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S to r i e s

sharing

Instead of only discussing the design or concept, one delightful outcome was that in many occasions participants spontaneously shared stories that they had been through or heard from others. Through the stories, it was possible to find out what are the most impressive and valued points for them.

Some passengers highly endorsed the airport temporary storage concept, and later told their “painful” stories. “ This could solve the problem of my friend. The security checked his pocket. There was a small knife, handmade. It was ver y old gift from his father. They wouldn’t let him take it. Then he had to go back to the other side of security. Then he had to arrange for the post. He took a long time, ver y inconvenient. He didn’t want lose it so he had to do it. So I think this could be good for that. ” – Male 40-50 Wales, responded to the stor yboard “Because I have lost some expensive stuff so it could be good” – Male 28 Denmark, responded to the stor yboard Almost all the respondents were fond of the boarding information bar in the application prototype. They related it to their stories that occurred in airports. “ This is great. This morning I was waiting for the flight in Shanghai. I was listening to music and didn’t hear the notice of changing the gate. So I ran to the gate and nobody was there. No

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

information showed around.” - Male 30 China, responded to the prototype “ That’s pretty useful. That’s because I checked those screens like three times. I kept forgetting what I wrote.” “Yeah sometimes you are afraid. Sometimes actually they change it.” - Two girls 25 Denmark, responded to the prototype The stories all seemed to be out of negative experiences. This on the other hand, reflected the weak touchpoints of airport services.

S u g g e st i o n s From the user engagement, it turned out that ethnographic inquiry yielded insights well beyond what the researcher originally anticipated. All the feedback related to the present product were gathered for successive report for companies. From Rosenthal & Capper’s studies (2006), the ethnographic inquiry feedback could fall in the realm of ergonomics, aesthetics, product performance, and insights for new product strategy and marketing, which were learnt here as well.

• About ergonomics In the fieldwork, some participants showed their expertise marvellously. A young male passenger gave many suggestions about detailed interaction between user and the tablet during the usability testing. He mentioned the security instruction could be improved through near field communication technology, which would detect user’s location to display the security instruction.

“If it knew where I am in the airport, perhaps it would be relevant to this one. When I’m standing in the line of security, it shows me what do I take out from my pockets. If it’s random video, I’m not going to watch it. I’ll feel like it’s commercial. But if it knows me where I am, I will probably interact with them more.” – Male 28 Denmark, responded to prototype He also talked about the information bar on the top disappeared too fast, meaning people wouldn’t have enough time to pay attention to that subtle interaction animation. He was both creative and exquisite which defines the “lead user”.

• About aesthetic Some suggestions were about the size and appearance. Based on her observation of surrounding people and environment, a participant gave suggestions about variety of trolley sizes.

“As far as I think about what size is it, some people have small luggage, some people just have a purse. Others have multiple bags, families. You probably need a little variety in size. It would be useful for not ever yone, some people would be enough, and some wouldn’t be enough. Something to think about?” – Female 29 USA , responded to the stor yboard

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Also another pair of participants mentioned in vision cards session that the size of the robot trolley was “awkward”.

• About performance The performance here indicates that how working mechanism affects users. A participant concerned about the privacy security use of this trolley system. She recommended auto-log-off for a trolley that has not been touched for a certain amount of time, even before the design process went into detailing phase.

“And if you don’t use it by some minutes. It will be automatically logged out I guess? ” – Female 40 Nor way, responded to the prototype • About product strategy and marketing

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When presenting the concept of the product-service system before starting the usability test, some were challenging the whole concept of the design brief. For instance, a participant was analysing the feasibility of implementing such a product-service system. “I’m working for automation. So I will consider many realistic problems. The stakeholders need to make profits. If we don’t consider the reality, then they are all fine.”

He believed everyone would be using smart devices in the future so it was more reasonable to make software instead of a new product. “You need to provide a software platform instead of a large hardware.”

For the social feature, some participants were not convinced by it. They offered alternative strategies for fulfilling the social connection between strangers. Two participants suggested that “Maybe could be some open space, e.x. Café. To encourage face-to-face instead of chatting online.” Another participant wished some music events to connect people instead, “Maybe some live music… People sitting around and say ‘Hey do you like the band?’ I think that would be easier than chatting randomly.”

Some other suggestions were about the interactive map and boutique information. A participants proposed to include menus of restaurants so customers could preview the food types and prices.

6 . 3 B r i e f c o n c e pt e va l u at i o n Based on the ethnographic feedback, I evaluated each concept by considering cons and pros, and users’ comments. This evaluation (See Appendix 5) contributed to company’s decision-making process. What made it different from traditional pros and cons method is the layer of ethnographic input. Thus it avoided only judging by researcher’s subjective imaginative empirical opinion. Combining users’ perspective

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

with objective reality made the rational decision-making more arguable and grounded.

C o mpa n y ’ s

feedback

Based on my field research report and concept evaluation, the project manager gave some feedback on each concept from an organisational (i.e. design company and airport) perspective.

There were more additive ideas for the concepts such as listing shops that are appealing to the users, making it more personalised for instruction display.

Also, for some elements that were not existing in the present airport service, she gave compliments but thought that not all of the concepts would fit in the design brief: “It (the live show concept) could be good to overcome waiting time.”

“It is nice to have some social features.”

“Really good to have a transportation planner.”

“Good way to show it (boarding warning) without sound.”

Furthermore, for some “unrealistic” concepts, she pointed out the limitations due to pragmatic issues within the scope of the project: “Fingerprint scanning is a good solution but there are some issues about privacy.” “ The idea (of temporar y storage for illegal belongings) is good but the airport will use too much space for it.” “(Trolley security check is )Too expensive because of scanning technology.”

“It (whole body scanning) needs to get the permission from the government.”

The feedback from the project manager contributed to my reflection on the tension between design and research from both social-political and pragmatic perspective later on. However, analysis on the fieldwork would be demonstrated at first in the following section.

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7

R ESU LT S AND F I N DIN G S

7 . 1 T h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f d e s i g n a r t e fa c ts i n t h e f i e l d w o r k Following I will discuss how did each artefact (also including the journey map) support the ethnographic inquiry and their influence on participants.

A r t e fa c t 1 : J o u r n e y

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m a p a s a b e d d i n g to t h e d e s i g n st u d i o

The journey map here is also referred partially as a design artefact since it was a tool to bridge the gap between design practice and use practice. However, it was more like an ethnographic probe to discover respondents’ stories and thoughts. Although I had enough rich content to convey through the design artefacts, the journey map avoided the greasiness of bringing designs up straightforwardly. The first interviews without bedding questions or journey map were relative less constructive in terms of gaining active design insights. The most common responses appeared to be mere compliments for the concepts, such as “That’s cool”, “ Very nice”. An explanation could be the artefacts were not related to their personal journey. Thus this relation would seductively build a grounded reference for comparing their own journey to the design concepts. The journey map as a self-record artefact at the beginning helped participants recall memories and sort the weak touchpoints out.

Although the participants were still informants in this case, this selfrecord mapping required them to create artefacts actively. The boundary between ‘designer’ and ‘user’ became blurred (Luck, 2003).

Most participants were carefully filling out this map. When they found out their writing were not placed in the correct touchpoint, they drew Figure 11 A journey map filled by a participant arrows to change the position of their answers. But the deficit of giving them some tools that they might not be familiar with is that they might not be able to provide something relative or cater the designer’s original purpose. After all a tool that usually being used by designers is more abstract and creativity-requiring than interviews or questionnaires. For example, a participant just drew faces on the journey map, same as the example given on the map, instead of elaborating what he did. This would require the facilitator to do some successive inquiry such as digging into the negative experiences and asking about impressive moments.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

However, the result of this journey map was not used for collecting answers to certain survey topics and then interwoven to design ideation, but more for participants themselves reminiscing their own travel experiences in a more “design” way. The role of these probes acted as a bedding of the successive design artefacts presented in engagement sessions, can be conceived as an introduction to the co-design studio.

A r t e fa c t 2 : P r otot y p e

a s a n a c t i o n a bl e s a mpl e

The application prototype created a concrete interface for browsing through the new service flow and the look and feel of the new product. The look was high-fidelity but the functionality was not fully developed, which may be defined as vertical prototype referring to ”interactive, high-fidelity prototype of only a subset of the product’s available function” (Rudd, Stern & Isensee, 1996). It owns the easy-to-change virtue of low-fidelity prototype since the function was not fully developed, but also it gave a genuine presence to audiences. During the test session, many participants thought they needed to scan their boarding pass to the prototype at the boarding pass scanning step, which however was not functioning. The prototype gave details of the product and service. Thus the feedback would be biased to texts, images, interactions appearing on the screen and working mechanism of the prototype (what is the size, where is the scanner, when and where to take and return, etc.) It also helped improve detailing design practice from a wider reviewing audience group. A participant from the US pointed out that “Where is the charger” should be corrected as “Where is the outlet”. He related the social feature to an existing mobile application Tinder, which is a popular dating application in the US also based on location for strangers. He also mentioned Google Maps’ augmented reality street view while browsing through the prototype. These show it’s easy for participants to relate to things in daily life from this concrete artefact.

The unfulfilment of the functionality existing in vertical prototype also led to users’ being hesitant of interaction. Participants were asked to begin playing by themselves, but after some unresponsive actions caused by the wizard-of-Oz prototype functionally imperfection, they lost the incentive to continue. Since the technology imperfection is an intrinsic factor to affect the user experience (Winn, 2008), a fully running prototype could help to enhance the experience. However, because of this imperfection, users would have more “design ownership” (Muller, 1991). Given the “look and feel”, users could stand back to think about the overview in the mean time.

Subsequently, responses would also involve personal story and experience sharing. A participant recalled her experience in Berlin after seeing the interactive map. She couldn’t find her luggage that time and she expressed if one could find all the office locations in the map in this application, then it would help a lot for passengers.

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Nevertheless, generally participants were less creative in this information architecture and usability test. This is also the limitation of conducting user tests of shaped products in industry design. The realism constrains the possibility of speculating alternatives for the future. It is more actionable than dialogical.

A r t e fa c t 3 : S to r y b o a r d

a s a n e mpat h i s i n g m e d i ato r

The storyboard pamphlet described a near-future scenario in which the technologies included were close to today’s life. I used second-person pronoun while telling the story to make it more immersive for participants. This artefact is neither as concrete as the tablet prototype, nor as abstract as the vision cards. However, most participants were offering opinions and sharing stories actively about the scenarios in the storyboard session. A participant told his friend’s painful story at the security about almost losing treasured belongings, which was related to the temporary storage service scenario. Another told his story of looking for employees to inquire about luggage issues, which was not related to the scenarios directly but more as a “story trade-in”.

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Although the near-future scenarios were based on existing well-known technologies and second-person pronoun was employed during the narrative, participants were of relatively passive status and were less interactive with the artefact. Thus they tended to be merely audiences, instead of being active participants while comparing to the experiential tablet prototype and vision cards - they almost didn’t have any body movements here but merely watched and listened. But in the mean time, the scenarios created narrative resources that allowing readers to empathise and maybe even imagine becoming that person in some moments. In this manner, story narrative as a representation “involves a distancing and reification”, led to responses that were more “personal and particular” (Wright & McCarthy, 2008): A passenger claimed about the fingerprint identification scenario, “ The fingerprint is ver y typical for example in the US. But still has some sur veillance feature in it. I feel like I’m leaving something, some information. It’s a bit worr ying. So I wouldn’t really like that.”

A woman mentioned her story of helping the elders, “For me it’s fine. But today I had to help 3 elder people to do this self check-in. They were ver y lost and no people to guide them. And maybe it’s confusing of all the machines. But for me it’s fine. I think there should be a choice if I want to check-in my luggage in desk. The ser vice gets lost.”

A r t e fa c t 4 : V i s i o n

c a r d s a s a c o mpl i c at e d pl e a s u r e

The vision cards have a common theme of futuristic airport-related services while each card is a single concept. Participants could browse through and easily pick up each point to talk. Some participants even selected their favourite top three among the cards without being requested. This imaginative artefact led participants to step in

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

a virtual realm to assert opinions. The scenes were further to relate to daily life and were closer to be seen as absurdness. However, in Dunne’s (1999) interpretation, design should be provoking, ambiguous, and strange. The vision cards as a design artefact blurred “the boundaries between the real and the fictional, so that the visionary becomes more real and the real is seen as just one limited possibility” (Dunne, 1999). To quote from Dunne: “Industrial design is not art, but neither is it purely a business tool. While mainstream industrial design is comfortable using its powerful visualization capabilities to propagandise desires and needs designed by others, thereby maintaining a society of passive consumers, design research in the aesthetic and cultural realm should draw attention to how products limit our experiences and expose to criticism and discussion their hidden social and psychological mechanisms.”

Some participants also tended to relate to their present traveling situation with the visions. “ The perfect journey would be direct flight from place to place”, a traveller referred to as the perfect journey in his mind while he was waiting for a long connection in the airport. Afterwards when he chose his favourite vision cards, he picked three scenarios closely related to convenience.

The fears, on the other hand, were amplified by the futuristic circumstances. While browsing through the vision cards, many participants expressed their concern of overuse of technology.

“Anything gives you suggestions, knows what you are doing, is just kind of creepy. I mean people criticise Google for putting ads related to email. Google reads your email. Ever yone hates that you know.” - Male 28 USA Thus, the cards were not simply symbols of the utopian visions. They “mixed criticism with optimism to provide the ‘complicated pleasure’ found in other imaginative media such as film and literature, particularly those that explore boundaries between the real and the unreal” (Dunne, 1999). The exaggerated but concentrated concepts on vision cards reflected on social mechanisms. In this manner, participants often felt amused and opined their values and believes. A couple was discussing the robot trolley card.

Woman: I think Danish people wouldn’t use it.

Man: You (the woman) just said that if there’s no escalator - because there’s an escalator from the check-in info to the first floor. Sophie (the woman) didn’t notice it. So she said, ah that’s actually nice. And she said ‘well, if people can’t take the stairs, they are not allowed to fly.’

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Does

t h e o r d e r o f d i s c u ss i n g a r t e fa c ts m att e r ?

When exploring the application prototype as the start, people were more engaged in acting while exploring the interactive system. They wondered if this was something alive/existing. They watched more carefully through the procedures. While starting from the vision cards, the most noteworthy finding was that participants would check each card more carefully. Meanwhile, when interacting with the screen system at the last, the participants often felt overwhelmed.

“You know, I think this is good, but I think you have to start with the small easy thing, and then you can add more when people get used to the system.” - Male 50 Nor way, responded to the prototype

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However, for critical respondents, starting with imaginative artefacts might be risky to grasp the key points. When I started with the vision cards in some interviews, some participants became bewildered and criticised the feasibility of those concepts.

It seemed from this order it was harder for participants to enter an abstract and unorthodox realm. A participant expressed his incomprehension for those visionary ideas, “ The stakeholders need to make profits. If we don’t consider the reality, then they are all fine.” In the successive storyboard session, he was still keeping asking questions about how to implement those concepts.

Since I didn’t tell how many artefacts I was going to present, most participants played most active in the first artefact session. A female participant offered many suggestions at the beginning as for improving experiences in the airport, such as less hassle in security, shorter distance to the gate, lower temperature indoor. Afterwards, when going through the scenarios, she didn’t offer comment for the near-future storyboard and was repeating her first viewpoints in the vision cards session, “(pointing at the luggage carr ying robot card) As I said, sometimes it’s a ver y long way walk from the gate.”

But it doesn’t necessarily mean the conversation always owned the highest quality in the beginning. Sometimes it needs a bit pressure and even to use impatience to heat up the conversation. A participant expressed surprise when I started to show the last artefact, “Wow that’s complicated.” However, in the later session, he came up with the idea of having an open music event in the airport instead of merely criticising the social feature between strangers. In this manner, from concrete artefact to imaginative artefact, he became more talkative and his comments were also more creative. The merger of product concepts in different stages brought the participants in an intensive ritual. Concept similarities overlapping between different artefacts made it possible for participants to relate to them from different aspects and broaden their consideration.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

Design

a r t e fa c ts a s b o u n d a r y o b j e c ts

Regardless of the application prototype or the scenario-based storyboard, or the vision cards, the content of the artefacts was quite interpretative, while the interrelation between each scenario unit of the artefact and between artefacts was disclosed enough for participants to expand, bridge, or reject in order to fit their own interpretation and believes (Gaver et al, 2003). Many participants used vague and equivocal statements as response such as “I don’t know, it could be…”. In this manner, it’s hard to articulate participants’ preferences. It’s not only because of the lack of “common language”, but also the ambiguity of the design artefacts. They are not fixed high-fidelity prototypes, instead, they are changeable and explorative (Mogensen, 1994). As for the boundary and ambiguity, often it needs a bit more investigation to tinker the accounts when participants are hesitating. In the interviews, a participate revealed the prototype was too complicated for him. Then the researcher asked what was the complication referring to, if it was over-designed such as the social feature was not necessary. However, the participant denied that assumption later.

Participant: Talk? I talk to whom? If I wanna talk to you I click here?

Designer : You can tr y.

Participant: You know I think it’s ver y good. But I think you need to start with the small, easy thing. And then you can add, when people get used to this system.

Designer : You mean there are too many functions?

Participant: I don’t know. If you give me this I don’t know if I will use. Yeah I think there are too many functions. I don’t know. Young people will probably say OK. Designer : The talking function is not useful for you?

Participant: I don’t know. I have been here since 3 o’c lock. I have been sitting there, I have been eating, I have been working, I have been walking…So maybe I could communicate with you, if you are also alone then maybe we eat dinner together.

The ambiguity and “boundary” of this talking mock-up is that it enabled people to focus on the context of usage instead of details. This reflected the foundation of the design - why, when and how would people use it. Then the precision and clarity in “what” could thus be generalised by analysing usable contexts and ethnography results by design team.

As the main goal of doing design ethnography, acknowledging informants’ world-view and preferences is the basic in-gathering. All the responds expressed their worldview, how do they see technology, how do people use technology today in the storyboard session and vision cards session. As virtual scenarios, the information included in these design artefacts is aberrant from a normal journey or service today in the airport. They were provoking participants to talk about their preferences, experiences and general views about service and technology.

“I think technology these days are so embedded in our life now, smart phones these kinds

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of things. People want to get away from it a bit. So you need to be careful about which direction you go. It’s just going to be a bit scar y...“ - Male 27 USA , responded to the vision cards The participant talked about his general view of today’s technology in people’s life and kept a sceptical distance from artificial intelligences. In this manner, design artefacts enabled democratic discussion among the futures people actually want, as Ezio Manzini (a leading role in sustainable design through scenarios) advocates to designers.

D i a lo g u e

as an engaging requisite

Creating a friendly and calm atmosphere helped to gather design responses in ethnographic activities. While I was facilitating the research individually, some participants were spontaneously starting conversation with me, such as asking where I come from, what study I work with, what’s my plan after graduation. The participants were also trying to investigate me at the same time while I was doing ethnographic work, which appeared as an intervention in their travel journey.

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When I approached an US traveller, he started to use his GoPro (a tiny HD video camera often being used in extreme sports) to record me at first, which was a contingency from the designer’s perspective. He used about one minute to record our talk as part of his travel journal around Europe. Then we started the design ethnographic activity via a conversational approach, which was an appropriate way to maintain a level of playful engagement and dialogue (Wakkar y, 2005).

Keeping in conversation helped to gain access to turn the corner while encountering participants with passive attitude towards engagement. A participant was critical and passive all the time, and even tried to criticise the issue in my country to provoke my empathy. He proclaimed about the ideal world in the scenarios that full of technology and intelligence. It was laborious and circumscribed to seek constructive insights on him. While I was trying to lead him to an inoffensive conversation, he revealed his believe that he didn’t like smart technology in general.

“Because I don’t like smart phone. I like face-to-face.“ Another example of my conversation with a woman who also remained passive all the time: Designer : What do you think about the stor y? Is there anything you want to give an opinion at?

Participant: No, it’s cool.

Designer : Can you imagine it happens in 5 years?

Participant: Sure. Why not?

Designer : Can you recall something might be related to your former experiences?

Participant: Where?

Designer : I mean, for example it was hard to find the gate or something like this.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

Participant: Well, if you can’t get your luggage in some countries it may be hard to find the office to do that. I struggled in Berlin.

Designer : What’s the problem? Why couldn’t you find your luggage?

Participant: It didn’t come. Then I need to find the office and help me to get it. We were going to take a train. So I was delayed, but it turned out good. They brought my luggage.

Designer : And ever ything was in German so it was hard to find the office?

Participant: No I had a hard time because I think in the airport it’s difficult to find ever ything so this application could be useful for that.

The progressive inquiry led to her “confession” of her traveling story in the end. Thus only through design artefacts per se might not achieve wanted results. Dialogue made ethnographic inquiry remain sympathetic and reposeful, as well as impelled inquiry becoming more productive.

From the analysis on results and findings, the design artefacts with different qualities that employed for different purposes resulted in diverse impacts on participants.

Therefore, multiple design artefacts are necessary to prepare for intensifying discussion, but in an appropriately used manner. Especially when in such an ephemeral time-span, diverse artefacts are entailed to gain participants’ values and preferences from different facets. Also, the ambiguity and boundary attributes of design artefacts woven with scenarios, supported by dialogues, fulfilled the ethnographic work and provided ethnographic sources for product design. However, me as a centre role in this collaborative design practice needs to be deliberated as well, which is the main topic of the following section.

7. 2 T h e

role of a product design researcher

In doing this design and research work, numerous struggles were identified which I have confronted and considered central to my work. The struggles and tensions challenged me to give a deeper reflection of my role to empower the design agenda. The design activities involved with both design practice and use practice. I conducted design work at first by collecting use practice through explorative studies.

Then I brought the design artefacts into use practice as a collaboration design work. In the mean time, I tried to expand use practice through design practice and collaboration work. In turn, the results from ethnographic research helped to expand design practice from organisational perspective.

As a designer, I aimed at designing a useful and delightful system for the massive use in airports. The initial research provided grounding evidence for prototyping.

Considered the key findings from initial research, I designed an application according to the design requirements. The prototype on the tablet was connected to a luggage handling trolley and simulated the adjustable function of changing position and angle in order to cater different contexts. For creating a thoughtful process in the fuzzy front end for screening design concepts as well as understanding the use

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practice from a closer position, I designed fictional stories via combining the product concept and advanced near-future technology and ideal services. As a further envisioning, the vision cards were designed by freeze-framing sci-fi plots. The design practice not only undertook the anticipation and requirements from the company, but also sprouted wondering about choices between alternatives and their impacts on potential users.

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Me as the researcher and facilitator in the user engagement, needed to tend several aspects during interviews. One of the pragmatic principles in consideration was to distinguish the usability test of the application prototype from standard user testing. One reason was that recording user testing inside the airport through videos was not feasible. Hence, instead of testing functionality and user interaction, it would be more appropriate to verify the information architecture. Furthermore, the functionality of the prototype was rather rough. Sometimes participants were hesitant to interact. Thus as a facilitator, I needed to impel the conversation and ethnographic inquiry. I acted as a “user” of the tablet prototype when they were indecisive to move on. I would ask questions such as “Is there anything here you like or dislike?” to provoke the answers if participants were not talking voluntarily.

For the vision cards, sometimes participants were confused about some futuristic concepts, then I would explain it by relating to real life examples. On the other hand, the participants usually appropriated the concept to fit in their own situation. For expanding the use practice through co-ideation, I would ask them some “what if” questions to encourage open feedback. “What if they are non-English speakers?” “What if someone doesn’t use smart phones?” Some users would change their perspective, “Yeah, that would make sense for them.” But some were still sticking to their own perspective, “Ever yone will use smart phones in the future, it’s just a matter of time.” In this manner, the facilitator also worked as a provocateur - through asking tentative questions in the inquiry to sound out their firm believes beyond their intuition and create possibilities to trigger broader discussion.

As a design ethnographer, I was dedicated to challenge the “taken-for-granted” assumptions (Anderson, 1994). For designers and project managers, they often focus on the cooperation strategies and practical interests in the product development.

They rarely stress the knowledge and skills of some “real” users. For instance, a project manager reputed “Almost ever ybody knows how to do it (boarding pass scanning) in the airport because of the automated check-in”. Out of the support for design brief and product strategy, it seems to be reasonable to neglect some extreme situations and optimise the project interests. However, more considerate improvements for design brief could be applied due to the variety of individual cognition to technology. In the ethnographic inquiry, a passenger told her story that just happened about helping elders to do the self check-in since they were confused about the machines. In this case, proposals about guiding and improving the experience of elders for certain services would re-frame the design brief towards a DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

more attentive paradigm.

For all the complexity practice, I defined myself as a product design researcher (See Figure 12). Dedicated in product design agenda, in the mean time I conducted ethnographic research to re-frame both use practice and design practice.

Inspired by Kjærsgaard’s (2011) diagram of characterising design anthropology, ethnomethodologically informed design and participatory design, I positioned myself as a product design researcher in between on the border of use practice and design practice. My focus was on reshaping and refreshing existing knowledge on both sides. Some knowledge was out of scope, while some new knowledge was imbued with. Also, the tension of positioning myself in between re-framed the collaborative work - how I approached users, how I briefed to company, and how to translate them to a “common language” that could be understood by both sides. In this manner, “design for now”is informed by concrete use practice. It generates useful and usable values for companies, not only through experiential prototype testing, but also through discussion of other shadowy scenarios. “Design for the future” is a vision-gathering practice especially for long-term projects. The combination of product design and ethnographically inspired field research through different kinds of artefacts created a seedbed of enlarging and diversifying the design strategy and iteration.

Figure 12 The role of a product design researcher

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CONCLUS I O N This thesis presented the results of a study on an inter-discipline merging product design and design ethnography. For the design agenda of designing a guiding system embedded on airport luggage handling trolleys for a long-term project Navigaid, the study was concerned about expanding both design practice and use practice not only for the present design brief but also for speculating the future.

For answering this, I initially researched on the background and context of both use practice and design practice, which composed by Value Network Mapping, desk research, field observation, and interviews. Based on the results from the initial exploration, I designed three artefacts for user engagement: an interactive application on a tablet connected to a luggage handling trolley, a near-future folded pamphlet storyboard and a set of far-future vision cards.

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Through fieldwork by bringing the design artefacts inside airport transit area to passengers (i.e. the users of the product), the participants shared their stories and offered suggestions about ergonomics, aesthetics, product performance, and product strategy and marketing. For company deliverable, I evaluated pros and cons of each concept that appeared in the design artefacts by combining with users’ feedback, in order to have empirical evidences on further design practice. Subsequently, I presented company representative’s feedback on the concept evaluation, which reflected the tension between design and research.

The fieldwork demonstrated how different qualities of the design artefacts influenced user engagement: the journey map employed for self-record traveling touchpoints introduced users to the design studio; the application prototype provided concrete interface for interaction; the storyboard pamphlet narrative empathised users; the vision cards mixed criticism and optimism for speculating the future and criticising the present. On the other hand, the order of discussing design artefacts in terms of from concrete to abstract or from abstract to concrete influenced the performance of the field research diversely depending on the respondents.

Some other lessons related to fieldwork and design were learnt from the findings: design artefacts as a boundary object, supported design activities for co-situating users and designers; dialogue as an engaging requisite, guaranteed the ongoing progress of fieldwork. On the other hand, the tensions and dilemmas between product design and design ethnography were studied: positioning in between use practice and design practice, the product design researcher re-framed the design brief by imbuing with new knowledge not only for now, but also for the future.

DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

DISCUSSI O N Despite the fieldwork shows an inspiring approach to combine product design and design ethnography, it also presents some limitations.

Firstly, the artefacts designed regardless of the concrete application prototype or the imaginative vision cards, the concepts or scenarios were all specified. Even though they touched upon the border between reality and virtuality, and participants could use this ambiguity to fit their own interpretation, they lost some potential to create meanings freely and provoke broader speculation, which is also harder to conduct in a short time-span fieldwork.

Secondly, the dialogues of the fieldwork between the researcher and participants were more natural flowed than deliberately structured. This on the one hand is better for bridging the “strangers’ gap” between the researcher and respondents.

On the other hand it lavished the opportunities to gather more “usable” data.

Another cliché is about the virtues and vices in the group interviews. There were three group interviews and they were influencing each other. However, for some taciturn participants, individual participation was adverse for opening the scope.

A more organised research team would help to improve accuracy and efficiency of conducting this type of field research.

Thirdly, the value of this research is limited to contribute on de facto design proposals.

Rather than generating design proposals for design deliverable, the study was more about involving user’s views to challenge the design brief. It doesn’t make the fuzzy front end less “fuzzy”, to some extent it even makes the design practice more fluffy. The broad user group doesn’t bring focused targets to the design brief. Nevertheless, the dilemma of making the outcome of ethnographic research findings more communicative and catering to engineer needs has been irritating practitioners for long. Jones (2006) suggests using an experience model as a visualisational representation to make ethnographic research findings more actionable, so ethnography could play a more effective role in “informing design”.

Similar visualisation methods could be employed if having a set of more track-able data collection.

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DESIGNING FOR NOW OR FOR THE FUTURE?

ACKNOW L EDGEM ENT S I would like to thank the lovely people who helped me during the three months.

Thank my parents, who supported me half an earth away. Thank my supervisor Laurens, who guided me throughout all the confusions. Thank Lars for allowing me to participate in Navigaid project. And Louise, thank you for introducing me the project, helping me to get the airport pass that enabled my field research, and giving me feedback on my design. Also Peter and Christian in Triagonal, it was very nice to meet and talk to you. A great thanks to Barbara for proof-reading my thesis. It is also interesting and important to have a second view from another discipline to improve my writing. And thanks to Robb and Mette, who kindly gave me very helpful academic ideas. Besides, thank you for all my friends in ITPD and Copenhagen.

It is really important to be accompanied by you no matter when I’m energetic or frustrated.

Thank you all for making this true.

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YOURAN YOU M aster T hesis U niversity

for of

IT P roduct D esign M ay . 2014 S outhern D enmark