Designing Novel Applications Inspired by Emerging Media Technologies

The field of Human-Computer Interaction provides a number of useful tools and methods for obtaining information on end-users and their usage context to inform the design of computer systems, yet relatively little is known on how to go about designing for a completely novel application where there is no user base, no existing practice of use available at the start. The success of the currently available HCI methodology that focuses on understanding users' needs and establishing requirements is well-deserved in making computing applications usable in terms of fitting them to end-users' usage contexts. However, too much emphasis on identifying user needs tends to stifle other more exploratory design activities where new types of applications are invented in order to discover or create new activities currently not practiced. In this paper, we argue that a great starting point of novel application design is not the problem space (trying to rigorously define the user requirements) but the solution space (trying to leverage emerging computational technologies and growing design knowledge for various interaction platforms), and we build a foundation for a pragmatic design methodology supported by the authors' extensive experience in designing novel applications inspired by emerging media technologies

Redesigning Futurice - Introducing Service Design into an Agile Software Contractor

Agile software development provides efficient means for the creation of software at low levels of design, but fails to include high-level design into the development process. Service design works at these high levels, but there is unclarity as to how to combine the two. In this thesis I explore ways to introduce service design into an agile software contractor, taking Futurice Ltd. as an empirical environment. I use co-creative methods to map Futurice’s culture and as a solution present three actionable steps: A design team strategy; a novel role of the User Experience Product Owner; and a Service Design Method Toolkit, an artifact-based design heuristic