Designing Interactive Systems for the Developing World – Reflections on User- Centred Design

User-centred design (UCD) is a well-accepted and useful design methodology for designing interactive systems. In recent years, developing world researchers have attempted to utilise UCD but with mixed results. The results from two developing world, UCD projects, MuTI Mobile and CyberTracker, have shown that the analysis tools and techniques provided by UCD are useful but difficulties arise when interpreting the analysis findings to produce a requirements specification. In particular, traditional UCD methodologies fail to consider the broader and complex effects of the user’s physical and social environments. The field studies also highlighted the limitations of existing early-stage prototyping techniques, such as paper-prototyping. The authors address these issues by presenting several tools and techniques that they feel are more suited to the developing world and essential components of a candidate ‘UCD4Dev’ methodology. These tools and techniques include the use of ‘4Dev’ frameworks, such as the ‘Real Access/Real Impact’ criteria, to highlight pertinent developing world issues, the use of higher fidelity technology artefacts during early stage prototyping, the importance of developing a motivated user group and the need for a progressive participatory design approach

Participatory design and participatory development: a comparative review

This paper examines literature in the twin domains of participatory interactive systems design and participatory approaches to international development. As interactive systems are increasingly promoted as a possible means of achieving international development goals, designers generally agree that participatory design approaches should be applied. However, review of the literature reveals that these two different traditions have more complex relationships, and questions must be asked about: the aims of participation, the forms of participation that are being advocated, and the skills and strategies required of practitioners. The findings suggest that successful integration of participatory interactive systems design into development will require careful reflection on the nature of development and the approaches adopted.</p

Metamorphosis: Transforming Non-designers into Designers

In this paper we make the case that there is today a growing number of educational settings experiencing challenges when it comes to transforming non-designers into designers, and in particular, interaction designers. We see this development as a consequence of an increased awareness and recognition of what broadly could be labeled as a design perspective. We examine the transformational process, the metamorphosis, by which non-designer students become interaction designers. We identify and describe the barriers that make it difficult for the students to move through this transformational process. We also propose some pedagogical approaches that can reduce the barriers and improve the possibility for the transformation to occur. The approach that we have developed and describe consists of three parts. Based on a fundamental understanding of the nature of design, we have developed (i) a tentative transformational model of how non-designers become interaction designers; (ii) a special kind of conceptual framework used to support students in the transformational process; and (iii) design assignments based on real-world design problems. We end the paper with two conclusions. First we argue that there is a challenge in transforming non-designers into designers, but that it is possible if the educational effort is based on an understanding of design and on the transformational process with its barriers. Finally we argue that the experience of trying to turn non-designers into interaction designers is in itself a valuable research approach. Dealing with non-designer students reveals deep insights about the nature of the design process and makes it possible to better formulate what constitutes a designerly approach. Keywords Design, Design education, Pedagogy, HCI</p

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Which user interaction for cross-language information retrieval? Design issues and reflections

A novel and complex form of information access is cross-language information retrieval: searching for texts written in foreign languages based on native language queries. Although the underlying technology for achieving such a search is relatively well understood, the appropriate interface design is not. The authors present three user evaluations undertaken during the iterative design of Clarity, a cross-language retrieval system for low-density languages, and shows how the user-interaction design evolved depending on the results of usability tests. The first test was instrumental to identify weaknesses in both functionalities and interface; the second was run to determine if query translation should be shown or not; the final was a global assessment and focused on user satisfaction criteria. Lessons were learned at every stage of the process leading to a much more informed view of what a cross-language retrieval system should offer to users

Too Cool at School - Understanding Cool Teenagers

Cool can be thought about on three levels; the having of cool things, the doing of cool stuff and the being of cool. Whilst there is some understanding of cool products, the concept, of being cool is much more elusive to designers and developers of systems. This study examines this space by using a set of pre-prepared teenage personas as probes with a set of teenagers with the aim of better understanding what is, and isn’t cool about teenage behaviours. The study confirmed that teenagers are able to rank personas in order of cool and that the process of using personas can provide valuable insights around the phenomenon of cool. The findings confirm that cool is indeed about having cool things but in terms of behaviours cool can be a little bit, but not too, naughty

Roles and responsibilities in agile ICT for development

This paper examines the different roles in designing interactive software in a ICT for development context. Using experiences from a participatory action research project, in which we used agile methods to design and deploy an system to support ‘agricultural information flow’ for a co-operative of small farmers in rural India, we identify points of difference between the roles in standard descriptions of agile software methods and the roles as they emerged in our project. A key finding is the critical role played by a ‘Development Project Manager’ in facilitating dialogue, orchestrating the activities of other actors and in building the capabilities and confidence of all the participants in joint action

Design and design thinking in business and management education and development

Design and design thinking have been identified as making valuable contributions to business and management and the numbers of higher education programs that teach design thinking to business students, managers and executives are growing. However multiple definitions of design thinking and the range of perspectives have created some confusion about potential pathways. This paper examines notions of design and design thinking and uses these definitions to identify themes in higher educational programs. We present the findings from an initial exploratory investigation of design and design thinking in higher education business programs and define four distinct educational approaches around human centred innovation, integrative thinking, design management and design as strategy. Potential directions for management education programs are presented

Remembering today tomorrow: exploring the human-centred design of digital mementos

This paper describes two-part research exploring the context for and human-centred design of ‘digital mementos’, as an example of technology for reflection on personal experience(in this case, autobiographical memories). Field studies into families’ use of physical and digital objects for remembering provided a rich understanding of associated user needs and human values, and suggested properties for ‘digital mementos’ such as being ‘not like work’, discoverable and fun. In a subsequent design study, artefacts were devised to express these features and develop the understanding of needs and values further via discussion with groups of potential ‘users’. ‘Critical artefacts’(the products of Critical Design)were used to enable participants to envisage broader possibilities for social practices and applications of technology in the context of personal remembering, and thus to engage in the design of novel devices and systems relevant to their lives. Reflection was a common theme in the work, being what the digital mementos were designed to afford and the mechanism by which the design activity progressed. Ideas for digital mementos formed the output of this research and expressed the designer’s and researcher’s understanding of participants’ practices and needs, and the human values that underlie them and, in doing so, suggest devices and systems that go beyond usability to support a broader conception of human activity