User Driven Innovation: Incorporating Disabled Lead Users in Early Phase Product Development

How can disabled non-designers play a leading role in product development? As part of early phase product ideation, designers often rely on methods (Pahl & Beitz, 1996, Chapter 4). These methods help designers develop appropriate solutions to design problems. However, ideation processes may also involve non-designers. These could be end-users, managers, domain experts or other stakeholders. A very specific form of user involvement is through lead users. Lead users can be identified as: 1) being at the leading edge of an important market trend, and experiencing needs that will later be experienced by many users in that market, and 2) anticipating relatively high benefits from obtaining a solution to their needs. This motivates them to participate. They are often a limited group of persons with specialized skills or experiences (Urban & von Hippel, 1988). In this paper discuss the involvement of disabled lead users in early product development. We will focus on generative methods used for the creation of a wearable mobility device. The device consists, in part, of a 3D, time-of-flight DepthSense camera by Softkinetic, combined with a wearable tactile display developed by Elitac, two technology manufacturers. In addition to reflecting on our approach, we also introduce relevant research themes involving disabled lead users

Employee acceptability of wearable mental workload monitoring in industry 4.0 : a pilot study on motivational and contextual framing

As Industry 4.0 will greatly challenge employee mental workload (MWL), research on objective wearable MWL-monitoring is in high demand. However, numerous research lines validating such technology might become redundant when employees eventually object to its implementation. In a pilot study, we manipulated two ways in which employees might perceive MWL-monitoring initiatives. We found that framing the technology in terms of serving intrinsic goals (e.g., improving health) together with an autonomy-supportive context (e.g., allowing discussion) yields higher user acceptability when compared to framing in terms of extrinsic goals (e.g., increasing productivity) together with a controlling context (e.g., mandating use). User acceptability still panned out neutral in case of the former, however - feeding into our own and suggested future work

Managing innovation uncertainties : a user-oriented knowledge typology

New product development processes are subject to uncertainties. These uncertainties can and should be managed to prevent innovations from failing. Uncertainties or knowledge deficits are addressed by deploying the right approaches, or learning activities to stimulate relevant inflows of knowledge. A typology of user-oriented knowledge types is key to overcome the reluctance of organizations towards multi-actor involvement and user-oriented learning activities. Here, we present a user-oriented knowledge typology departing from the end-user, embedded in a two-states framework (current state opposing future state). We discuss three iterations of the framework, including an expert review and real-world application as part of a workshop with intermediary organizations. When implemented, the framework enabled participants to identify and select learning activities enriching their innovation project. We want to underline our vision to transcend the gut-feeling and experience-driven allocation of learning activities, but instead strive towards optimal activity-selection based on the knowledge deficit at hand

Helping young designers design for children: evaluating toys and possible values

When designing for children, it remains important not only to emphasise elements such as ergonomics and usability but also values, that can be translated into pleasurable user experiences for children. While methods such as interviews are commonly used to better understand our users, interviewing children can be a challenge. Experience as part of a year project on designing toys for children highlighted that children might answer questions in a surprising way, or students might struggle to ask questions that are not suggestive. To overcome some of these difficulties, we developed a Value Matrix, that can help students to explore the various values or incentives children might have while playing. This Value Matrix can subsequently be used to scan existing toys or new concepts and translate these insights into toys that consist of a wider variety of values children like to experience in a game or toy. We evaluated this tool with 118 first year Industrial Product Design students. Our results show that the Value Matrix gives students guidance and support while designing

The role of re-appropriation in open design : a case study on how openness in higher education for industrial design engineering can trigger global discussions on the theme of urban gardening

This case study explores the opportunities for students of Industrial Design Engineering to engage with direct and indirect stakeholders by making their design process and results into open-ended Designed Solutions. The reported case study involved 47 students during a two-weeks intensive course on the topic of urban gardening. Observations were collected during three distinctive phases: the co-design phase, the creation of an Open Design and the sharing of these design solutions on the online platform Instructables.com. The open sharing of local solutions triggered more global discussions, based on several types of feedbacks: from simple questions to reference to existing works and from suggestions to critiques. Also some examples of re-appropriation of the designed solutions were reported. These feedbacks show the possibilities for students to have a global vision on their local solutions, confronting them with a wider and more diverse audience. The case study shows on the other hand the difficulty in keeping students engaged in this global discussion, considering how after a few weeks the online discussions dropped to an almost complete silence. It is also impossible with such online platforms to follow the re-appropriation cycles, losing the possibility of exploring the new local context were the replication / modification of the designed product occurred. The course’s focus on Open Design is interesting both under the design and educational points of view. It implies a deep change in the teaching approach and learning attitude of students, allowing unknown peers to take part of the design process and fostering a global discussion starting from unique and local solutions

The Isbell-hull of an Asymmetrically Normed Space

In this talk, we discuss an explicit method to define the linear structure of the Isbell-hull of an asymmetrically normed space

The Diorama Project : development of a tangible medium to foster STEAM education using storytelling and electronics

Children of the 21st century grow up in a world full of information and technology. Education should equip them with useful skills and competencies, allowing them to actively and effectively take part in a globalised society. Teachers feel the need for educational tools that support innovative teaching. To this end, this paper describes the development of The Diorama Project. This series of trans-disciplinary workshops combines familiar subjects, like language and art, with new topics such as programming and electronics, to foster valuable skills and knowledge in a more fun and tangible way. Pupils team up to write, record and tinker a story. Programmable electronics let their theatre plays come alive. An open source platform provides all the information for teachers to organise the workshops by themselves. Theycan use it to share their experience and knowledge with colleagues worldwide

Impact of user involvement on design students’ motivation and self-confidence

Involvement of users in the design process is generally viewed favourably, both within academia and industry. Their involvement can be seen as a strategy for designers to clarify their design task and reduce uncertainties in the design process. Simultaneously, there is a lack of understanding about the impact that user involvement has on students and how they experience doing so. This paper reports on a study where students were asked to self-report their motivation and self-confidence throughout a design exercise, stretching 11 days, with surveys repeating daily. Additionally, students were asked to indicate which-if any-strategies of user involvement they used every day. We find that students self-reported motivation did not change statistically significantly, while self-confidence did change. However, in neither case did student's involvement of end-users impact how motivated or self-confident they were. We discuss our results in relation to existing research on method use in general and user involvement in particular and conclude with some suggestions for future work