Design driven user study workshop for Chinese startup innovation

The paper illustrates a serial user study workshop designed for startups seeking disruptive innovation and business opportunities based on the lean process from the point view of user-centered design approach. In the Chinese market, business process moves fast. The product development cycle is relatively short which makes it easy to be interrupted and changed. Making sure the product is targeting the right marketing segment is the key to business success. Therefore, innovation has to be created on the true needs of the accurate end users. User-centered design approaches have the natural advantage to forge innovation by defining the problems of the existing products usage for the users and creating the solution that seamlessly meets the potential demands of the product users. This capability of user-centered design is extremely suitable for the early stage of the startup innovation process especially in the customer identification, market positioning, and business model generation. User study is located in the core of this user-centered innovation process. Performing a good user study ensures the product is aimed at users’ needs, which guarantees once the product is given birth it is already well-positioned in the market sharing. This is the key to the success of startup business. In this paper, a serial workshop covers the topics from what are the user study methods suitable for the lean startup innovation, how to conduct an effective interview, and how to synthesize users’ insights and find new business opportunities. By doing the workshop we try to answer the following questions which ultimately influence the nurturing process in the incubator about how design thinking can intervene to create radical innovation in startup teams: why the design driven user study is so important to the startup business? What is design thinking in the non-design background startuper’s mind and how can they incorporate the mindset in the business operation? What Chinese business environment impacts in the innovation process and how could the startups position the empathy for the users as the key for the product success

Using Digital Technology to Innovate Product Meaning: Case studies in Electric Vehicles

Human Computer Interaction scholars have predominantly adopted a “user-centered” approach to study changes in product functions and aesthetics. Relatively few, however, have explored how designers radically innovate by proposing new product meaning with digital technology. Product meaning refers to an impression, conveyed collectively by a defining set of functional and/or aesthetic qualities of a product, that cause it to be perceived as a particular kind of product. We draw on design and innovation theories and use comparative case studies of electric vehicle to articulate three mechanisms by which designers propose “what would be desirable” for users: designers use digital technology (1) as a part of the product, in the process of delivering product, and in new contexts to propose innovative meaning (2) to collect user feedback, and (3) to selectively take user feedback to re-propose innovative meaning. The paper extends previous user-centered IS literature with a designer-centered approach

Less is more: what design against crime can contribute to sustainability.

Crime is a voracious form of premature obsolescence. Replacement of insured stolen items increases levels of product consumption that are unsustainable. Additional to the ecological cost of crime are the social and economic impacts linked to ‘courts, cops and corrections’ – money better spent on building social innovation and sustainability. The user/ abuser centered methodology of the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) at University of Arts London as a socially responsive design movement is described in this paper. It argues that DACRC’s approach is unique. It addresses social agendas by accommodating consideration of multiple, often competing, user-demands in a given context, and responding in ways that produce both fiscal and social capital through sustainable design

Democratizing Innovation

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license

Questioning conventions : are product conventions trading off the usability of products for short term user satisfaction

Mapping conventions are a key aspect of user centered design as they present users with familiar interactions in unfamiliar products. Conventions evolve over time and are slow to be adopted, requiring a high percentage of acceptance within a society, ensuring that conventions exhibit a sufficient level of usability. However this paper argues that while usability is a necessary condition for good interactions it is not a sufficient one. Therefore user centered design which accents individuals bias towards conventions my in fact be hindering the innovation of product interactions. This paper argues that a cognitive approach should be adopted in order understand and reassess product interactions. An experiment was carried out that demonstrates the influence that simple mappings can have on cognitive load. The results showed that basic mappings of the types that are found throughout product conventions can have a substantial impact on mental load and subsequently product interaction

Democratizing Innovation

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy.Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license

ABC design method: implementing adoption of innovation criteria through design heuristics for social design driven innovation projects

This article explains the experiences of the implementation of a decision support method in product/service design processes -- The research focuses on the utilization of a heuristic based method, as a tool to integrate adoption of innovation criteria to product design development phases -- All of this, with the objective to enhance the adoption of product/service solutions in social innovation driven projects and support conceptual exploration, providing more detailed information about the relationship between context, user, and product in early stages of the process -- Finally, this article is centered on an exploratory validation of the method by the development of two design cases to evaluate the assistance in a conducted design proces

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Integrating design thinking into extreme programming

© 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. The increased demand for information systems drives businesses to rethink their customer needs to a greater extent and undertake innovation to compete in the marketplace. The design thinking (DT) is a human-centered methodology leads to creativity and innovation. The agile applications development such as extreme programming (XP) as a rapid application development approach tends to focus on perfecting functionality requirement and technical implementation. However, it causes significant challenges to building software/applications to meet the needs of end-user. This study integrates DT practices into XP methodology to improve the quality of software product for the end-users and enable businesses to achieve creativity and innovation. The proposed integrated DT@XP framework presents the various DT practices (empathy, define, persona, DT user stories) are adapted into XP exploration phase, prototyping and usability evaluation into XP planning phase. Our work demonstrates the applicability of DT concepts to analyze customer/user involvement in XP projects

Bridging the Gap

School districts across the country are increasingly seeking out digital tools to support the work of educators, in the hopes of improving students' academic achievement. With the rapid emergence of this new market, many districts have been challenged by the task of identifying and procuring educational technology (ed-tech) products that match the needs of their educators and students.The NYC Department of Education's "Innovate NYC Schools" division, supported by a U.S. DOE Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, aims to address this problem, in part by promoting "user-centered design," an approach that puts the needs and preferences of products' intended users (in this case, teachers, students, and parents) front and center in the development and procurement of new technology.Bridging the Gap describes the design and implementation of three Innovate NYC Schools initiatives grounded in user-centered design theory:School Choice Design Challenge (SCDC),an effort to develop apps that would help students explore and narrow down their choices of high school.#SharkTankEDU events, during which ed-tech developers present a product to a panel of educators who provide feedback on the tool.Short-Cycle Evaluation Challenges (SCEC), a classroom-based, semester-long pilot of ed-tech tools intended to inform product development, as well as the ultimate procurement decisions of school staff.The report focuses on four phases of work involved in bringing ed-tech companies and the users of their products together: defining a problem; selecting users and ed-tech companies; implementing pilot-based initiatives; and evaluating products. It describes strategies used and challenges faced, and offers practical lessons gleaned from the experiences of the individuals who designed and participated in these efforts.