A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales

Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings

MASSIVE CODESIGN

This book focuses on “massive codesign”: the idea that multiple and/or numerous participants having different voices collaborate in a design pro- cess broken down into different steps and formats and resulting in a relevant and diversified amount of data. Services, strategies and scenarios are presented as the main field of ap- plication: these are complex items that demand complex processes be tac- kled, processes in which it is necessary to involve a variety of players who are largely interdependent and therefore who must collaborate in order to achieve any goal. The book essentially makes two main contributions: a “Collaborative De- sign Framework” to identify and structure codesign activities, methods and tools within massive creative processes; a “set of quick lessons learnt” to provide guidance to the conception and organisation of other massive crea- tive processes. The whole book is oriented at practice: it discusses codesign activities from the designer’s point of view, detailing issues such as process from beginning to end, activity flow, manipulability of tools, roles and rules for participants and many others. It is intended as a support for designers dealing in massive codesign processes and aims towards improved results

The usefulness of Usability and User Experience evaluation methods on an e-Learning platform development from a developer's perspective: A case study

The development of a web platform is a complex and interdisciplinary task, where people with different roles such as project manager, designer or developer participate. Different usability and User Experience evaluation methods can be used in each stage of the development life cycle, but not all of them have the same influence in the software development and in the final product or system. This article presents the study of the impact of these methods applied in the context of an e-Learning platform development. The results show that the impact has been strong from a developer's perspective. Developer team members considered that usability and User Experience evaluation allowed them mainly to identify design mistakes, improve the platform's usability and understand the end users and their needs in a better way. Interviews with potential users, clickmaps and scrollmaps were rated as the most useful methods. Finally, these methods were considered unanimously very useful in the context of the entire software development, only comparable to SCRUM meetings and overcoming the rest of involved factors

Designing with Children: Reflections on Effective Involvement of Children in the Interaction Design Process

This 
thesis 
contributes 
to 
the
 discussion 
around
 the 
practice
 of
co-design 
with 
children 
by 
providing 
support 
for 
reflections 
to
 practitioners. 
The
 framework
 that 
derived
 from
 this
 research 
aims 
to 
increase 
the
 awareness 
on 
the 
implications 
the 
different 
aspects
 involved 
on
 co‐design
 session 
have
 on 
its 
outcome. 
Researchers 
with 
little 
experience
 in
 managing 
co‐ design
 sessions
 can 
benefit 
from 
it
 when
 deciding
 on 
their 
co‐design 
strategies

Online User Feedback in Early Phases of the Design Process: Lessons Learnt from Four Design Cases

Online user feedback, collected by means of internet survey tools, is a promising approach to obtain early user feedback on concepts and early prototypes. In this study, the collection and utilization of online user feedback was investigated in four design cases: all master student projects for industry clients involving seven student designers. A total of 272 user participants provided quantitative feedback. Half of these also provided qualitative feedback. One third of the qualitative feedback was perceived as useful by the student designers. The main usefulness of the feedback was related to strategic concept decisions rather than the interaction design of the early prototype. Lessons learnt are provided

Massive Codesign

"This book focuses on ""massive codesign"": the idea that multiple and/or numerous participants having different voices collaborate in a design process broken down into different steps and formats and resulting in a relevant and diversified amount of data. Services, strategies and scenarios are presented as the main field of application: these are complex items that demand complex processes be tackled, processes in which it is necessary to involve a variety of players who are largely interdependent and therefore who must collaborate in order to achieve any goal. The book essentially makes two main contributions: a ""Collaborative Design Framework"" to identify and structure codesign activities, methods and tools within massive creative processes; a ""set of quick lessons learnt"" to provide guidance to the conception and organisation of other massive creative processes. The whole book is oriented at practice: it discusses codesign activities from the designer's point of view, detailing issues such as process from beginning to end, activity flow, manipulability of tools, roles and rules for participants and many others. It is intended as a support for designers dealing in massive codesign processes and aims towards improved results.