The term co-design refers to a philosophical and political approach to design best applied throughout the design life cycle [1].  Codesign builds on the methods and principles of Participatory Design which assumes ‘users’ are the experts of their own domain and should be actively involved in the design process. This article explores some of the methodological tools we use to enable codesign. Specifically, we explore the rationale behind some common workshop techniques used early in the design process, which combine the activities of research and idea generation.

The premise of codesign

Involvement of ‘users’ early in the research and ideation phases of the design process is often equated to “asking users what they want”.  (A certain quote oft attributed to Ford comes to mind). Codesign however, goes well beyond this. The premise is that ‘users’ become partners. Rather than being viewed as a source of information to be input into the design process, those impacted by the design are invited to work actively with designers to shape the definition and direction of the project. Participation can include sharing personal experiences and perspectives, contributing to the generation of new design concepts, the evolution of those concepts, analysis, interpretation, decision making, evaluation and more.

When taking a codesign approach it is our role as designers to facilitate that participation. At the beginning of the design process we work with users to understand the design project in relation to their everyday lives including their habits, rituals, dreams, attitudes and experiences. These then become resources for inspiring design concepts and direction. In order for people to actively and effectively participate in the design process they must be able to imagine, access, and express their experiences and expectations. Simply asking people questions is not enough to facilitate this process. This is because people are not explicit sources of information. As humans we are limited in what we can express by our existing frames of reference, we can only talk in the language that we know.

In addition, much of our experience and knowledge is tacit, or embedded in the everyday. Our habits, rituals, dreams and attitudes are not (necessarily) things that we can gain immediate access to in order to describe them to design researchers, we may not even be aware of them ourselves.  Codesign methods (also known as generative methods (Sanders 2000)) create a platform for this to occur by making things that are normally unobservable available as resources for design. While methods such as interviews and observations give us access to the explicit and observable, generative methods allow us to access the tacit and implicit aspects of people’s lives (Sleeswijk Visser 2009). They also set up a collaborative, discursive space between designers and users where ideas can be generated, explored and documented.

Codesign activities

As with any workshop, the specific activities will differ depending on the topic being investigated and the nature of the participants. However there are several qualities or principles that underpin most codesign activities that help to make people’s everyday experiences available and create a platform for sharing and ideation.

They are visual, expressive and creative

Codesign workshops make heavy use of visual materials as a way to assist people to make and communicate associations and experiences. This is because images are more accessible and quick to use (compared to written word for example) and participants are able to attribute their own meaning to them.  Random images can remind people about significant things they might not have considered or can act as metaphors to represent complex concepts. Images are also evocative and help to provide multiple frames and ways of seeing and expressing. They can be ambiguous enough to allow creative and unusual connections to be made and leave space for people to explore their own interpretations.

Building a “nudie” - a derivation of personas where participants create a visual version of a stakeholder to explore their perspective, needs and experiences. (Image care of Digital Eskimo)

The process of selecting images can also act to generate valuable discussion between participants. We often begin a workshop by asking participants to create a collage that describes their experiences about something related to the project topic (e.g., being a post graduate student, dealing with cancer, notions of giving etc). Visual storyboards can also be an effective way for participants to convey emotional experiences or journeys. In addition to what is created, it is the stories, memories and experiences that are shared when people communicate why particular images have been chosen or placed together that reveal significant insights.

Selecting images for a visual scenario that portrays the emotional aspect of an experience. (Image care of Inspire Foundation)

They are physical and tangible

The act of physically getting up, moving around and using our bodies and hands to make and do things, to select, create, stick, sort, gather, glue and compose, both individually and in groups, is a central part of creating space for discussion, sharing and idea generation. (Sanders in particular emphasises the ‘make’ aspect of generative methods). This can include three dimensional prototypes made out of playdoh or card for example, but it also applies to the building of collages, maps and story boards, or the process of acting out an interaction or experience. All of these activities can act as prompts that help participants to explore, remember, imagine and verbalise aspects of their everyday lives, feelings or experiences. The physical act of working in close proximity with other people and creating something together is also an important part of fostering collaboration, trust and sharing between participants.

Touch-points are grouped and categorised

A service described through the metaphor of a city

They support creativity through (appropriate) constraints

Part of enabling people to be creative and participate in the design process is in providing the right kind of constraints. Leaving things too open means participants struggle for direction or to get started, defining things too specifically leaves little room for participants to take ownership and create something that is meaningful to them. For example, when asking participants to generate or explore new campaign concepts or ideas, we will often have them incorporate a combination of words, images or concepts [2] or make use of physical props such as playdoh when developing their idea. These elements act as constraints that create boundaries within which participants need to work, but they also become inspirational start points that leave enough room for participants to apply their own creativity, strategy and ideas.

Planning out possible workshop activities and the props required

Activities such as building personas or scenarios also provide participants with a particular structure or format through which to think about, approach, explore and communicate aspects of the design. For example having participants build visual personas (e.g., nudies) or Facebook profiles can be a way to enable participants to explore and contribute to interpreting and connecting with that data. The concept and format of the ‘persona’ acts as a constraint that allows people to make sense of, and structure, information but allows them to do so through their own words and images. The scenario format, with specific actors and a beginning, middle and end also becomes a simple framework through which participants can create, communicate and evaluate new design ideas in context. In addition to the story itself the process of negotiating and considering the sequences of action involved and what should be included and represented and why, brings to light a range of details, experiences, needs and dependencies.

Exploring a concept through a visual storyboard or scenario

They are playful, fun and rewarding for participants

Fun is a deeply important aspect of participation. It is central to facilitating sharing, trust and confidence building and helping people open up. It is also part of keeping people’s energy levels up. If people are tired and the activities too serious, it is hard for participants to maintain interest or contribute in meaningful ways. This is particularly true if the topic of the workshop is sombre or serious. It is our role as designers to find a sensitive way of exploring such topics, but also one that allows people to open up and be creative. It can be very rewarding for participants to discover aspects about themselves they had not been aware of, or to think in new ways about a topic they had not stopped to consider before.  Participants often also value the opportunity to gain an understanding of other people’s experiences and perspectives. Ensuring the workshop is interesting and rewarding for participants is also critical when seeking participation and input to important topics that have a significant impact on people, yet can be perceived as potentially ‘boring’, unappealing or stigmatising e.g,. skin cancer, mental health, financial or social issues. Codesign workshops are key relationship building activities and sessions should always be enjoyable and energising (though also often exhausting) as well as ‘productive’.

A persona comes alive in this crime fighting scenario acted out through visuals and playdoh props

The outcomes

As part of enabling participation in the design process codesign activities aim to:

• Create a shared understanding and shared language between participants and designers
• Support a sense of immersion, dialogue and empathy for the perspective of those who will use and experience the design
• Generate rich personal, visual, and tangible material that is both subjective and designerly [3]
• Act as a source of inspiration and information for both designers and participants to work with in visioning future designs.

For these reasons the outputs from codesign activities differ significantly from interviews, surveys or observations. The subjective nature of what is produced through such workshops is important to supporting empathy and immersion into the design space whilst its designerly nature makes it a natural design resource, quite different to that of a written report. As designers we benefit from working with concrete things we can see and feel and imagery for example can be quickly scanned and absorbed (Mattelmäki & Battarbee, 2002). For designers, as well as clients and participants, material generated through such activities can be more accessible than traditional research outputs. They can also go beyond research feeding into idea generation and concepting.

In taking such an approach to design we, as designers, move from being experts to being facilitators. Our skills shift away from a focus on idea generation, to being able to facilitate design through collaboration. An important aspect of this is knowing what activities are appropriate, how to frame the activity (e.g., what are the right questions to ask) and what props and tools to provide as constraints.

To do true codesign, where participants become partners in the design process, requires a lot from us as designers, but also from our clients. There is a shift in (or relinquishing of) power that needs to take place to really allow participants to help shape and direct the design process. While this has not been the traditional approach to design, an increasing move towards co-creation and open innovation in mainstream businesses and local government environments will, we hope, create new and more opportunities for such an approach.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to our clients and participants, in particular the Inspire Foundation and Digital Eskimo.

Notes

[1] The term codesign is now widely used within product, UX and Service design fields. The interpretation of codesign applied here is based on the principles of Participatory Design and is best represented by the extensive work of Liz Sanders. Check out Sanders’ extensive selection of papers on her website for more about the different types of generative design activities she’s been developing and evolving for the last 20 years www.maketools.com

[2] See for example work by Kim Halskov and Peter Dalsgård on Inspiration Cards. Depending on the context there are also a range of pre-existing packs of images and concept cards that can be used such as the Iniva “What do you feel cards” or AT-ONES Touch-point cards. We often make our own and it is possible to design the workshop activities so that concepts or words that are used in idea generation activities come from earlier activities with participants, allowing ideas to be built upon over the course of the workshop. This approach means that the concepts are meangingful to participants and that they have a direct connection and sense of ownership over them.

[3] Sanders map of design research methods demonstrates the significance of designerly methods. (See Sanders, Design Research in 2006 (pdf). Design Research Quarterly, 1. and 
Sanders, L. An Evolving Map of Design Practice and Design Research, Interactions (November – December 2008). 
In these articles Sanders talks about how older more established styles of research which rely on systematic data analysis whilst newer, design driven forms of research focus on tools for expression, reflection and sharing which embrace subjectivity and blur the boundaries between research and design. For further discussions on “designerly” approaches see also the recent Johnny Holland article by  Jonas LöwgrenDesignerly ways of working in UX and Erick Stolterman et al’s paper Designerly Tools (pdf) from DRS’08.

Further references that might be useful to those exploring the use of such techniques include:

Gaver, W., Beaver, J., & Benford, S. (2003). ‘Ambiguity as a Resource for Design’. CHI, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. ACM.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). ‘Design: Cultural Probes’. Interactions, pp. 21-29.
Mattelmäki, T. (2008). ‘Probing for co-exploring’. CoDesign, 4(1), pp. 65 – 78.
Mattelmäki, T., & Battarbee, K. (2002). ‘Empathy Probes’.  PDC’02. Malmö, Sweden, CPSR.
Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). Bringing the everyday life of people into design. PhD Thesis Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft.
Sleeswijk
Visser, F., Stappers, P. J., Lugt, R. V. D., & Sanders, E. B.-N. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), pp. 119-140. (See Sleeswijk Visser’s publications page for access to her papers)

“To design is to have a ‘project’. Getting the design process moving is to expose and transform this ‘project’ in a conversation with those that it might eventually affect” (Buur, Binder, & Brandt, 2000).

In the early stages of design, rather than evaluate or validate specific user requirements or priorities, we are interested in exploring possibilities. As the opening quote suggests, we seek to engage with the various stakeholders the design project may eventually effect and gain an understanding of the unique design situation from their perspective. In Zimmerman et al.’s  (2004) framework for discovering and extracting knowledge during the design process, this is known as the Discovery phase of design. In this article we introduce Mobile Diaries as a field work method that can be utilised in the early stages of design to immerse into people’s everyday life.

This exploratory approach to self-reporting allows participants  to create and share a rich picture of their world, be they grandmothers, bankers, students, young parents or employees. In this article we describe Mobile Diaries, and provide examples of the kinds experiences they can enable.

A little background on self-reporting

In self-reporting, research participants are responsible for the data collection, allowing for the gathering of contextual data over-time and in situ, without the physical presence of researchers. Self-reporting can provide access into the private, personal and mobile aspects of people’s lives that are often difficult, or impossible, to access through traditional methods such as observation or interviews. The sustained personal reflection inherent in self-reporting makes available aspects that would otherwise remain tacit. So much of our lives are routinised and automatic, it is not until we are asked to document or consider certain activities that we are able to identify key junctures in our own understanding of a topic or a behaviour.

Self-reporting studies can take many different forms and the degree of formal structure is one of the things that differentiates approaches and determines the type of material collected. For example in the Electronic Sampling Method approach known as ESM (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) or beeper studies, the participant is directed to systematically log specific things at specific times. In more open-ended approaches (such as cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, & Pacenti, 1999) or visual diaries) data collection is only semi-structured around a particular topic. In this case participants are treated as active contributors and interpreters in the design process and select what, how and when to report. This encourages more playful and creative representations, important to an explorative and collaborative approach.

Over the last 10 years digital, online and mobile technologies have been incorporated into self-reporting methods in a range of ways (see end of article for some examples of other studies and platforms). These everyday tools can be easily integrated into people’s daily lives and support the generation of a range of different media forms such as video, images, text and audio.

Mobile Diaries

Mobile Diaries are a hybrid method that incorporate many of the creative and playful aspects of probes and emphasise the daily reflection of visual diaries. A range of different analog and digital technologies are used that allow participants to share and reflect on various dimensions of their day-to-day life.

A typical study

The exact design of the study (as always) is dependent on a number of factors such as:

• A definition of the problem space;
• The goals and objectives of the particular project;
• The theme of the study (e.g is it a personal project or focused on the workplace);
• Budget (how many people can we recruit and how, what kind of incentives might be required);
• The profile of the participants (e.g teenagers, adults or whole families); and
• Their current technology knowledge/competence and use (e.g how they might respond to the technology involved, how open are they to using new technologies).

Generally studies run from 1-3 weeks with between 1-10 participants. Topics explored depend on the study but could include, for example: sustainability in your everyday life; the role of mobile technologies in your life; or a ‘behind the scenes’ look at your job. Participants receive a ‘Mobile Diary Pack’ with various tools and instructions which direct the data collection around the particular design topic.

Mobile Diary Tools

A number of custom platforms have been developed to support online diaries, however, to date we have preferred to configure Mobile Diaries from existing platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr as this gives us greater flexibility over format, functionality and cost. Below we show the packs from a typical study (the list of available tools is growing and changing all the time, here we show typical ones we have used in the past).

During the study

Over the period of the study participants create collages, mind maps, videos and blog messages and send in mobile reports which appear on the blog. They also receive prompts, questions and reminders via the mobile phone and the blog.  The conversation is bi-directional: as we are receiving reports we are also responding with new questions or digging deeper into particular areas, and potentially redirecting the focus of the study as a result.

What do we see and learn?

The output of Mobile Diaries is a particularly provocative, experiential and sensorial insight into participant’s lives. As one of our clients described it “[we were able to] hear in people’s own words the challenges and learn about the context of sustainability in their day-to-day lives”. We share some examples below of the kinds of material generated and shared through this approach.

Life as it happens

Using their phone, participants capture images, text and audio and send this to the blog throughout the day. These reports give us a deeper appreciation of the activities that make up people’s daily lives and we are able to ‘see for ourselves’ actual examples and instances of things that might otherwise be anecdotal. Through these reports we can track events, locations, and a sense of participant’s emotions across the days and weeks. Over time, daily rhythms and habits emerge. The (near) real-time reporting increases the sense of immersion in people’s lives as we experience the activities ‘as they happen’ (Masten & Plowman, 2003).  This is complemented by more reflective accounts at the end of the day via the blog or with the video camera.

Personal Spaces and intimate stories

The use of video encourages in-depth descriptive accounts of events and surroundings from the participant’s perspective. The stills above are from one participant’s tour of their apartment building, which focused on areas relating to sustainability in the home. By giving participants video cameras and asking them to take us on a tour of their home we are able to explore and wander with the participant. This reveals some evocative spaces otherwise inaccessible to a design researcher; in addition to the explicit content being shared the video also conveys emotion and expression.

In another study focused on teenagers and their relationship to technology one participant gave us a tour of his shed, playing instruments as he told stories about the importance of this particular space to him.  These personal stories bring us closer to the participant’s world creating a sense of intimacy and proximity to the participants which is difficult to replicate in a one on one interview, discussion group or even during participant observations.

Inner thoughts and feelings, moments and metaphors

In addition to descriptions of external events and activities, Mobile Diary reports also capture emotions, feelings and inner thoughts. The examples above show emotional reactions and descriptions of personal feelings at particular moments in time. In some, the participant’s have used objects to serve as metaphors or symbols for representing emotions or ‘states’. This allows the participant to share inner thoughts and feelings that might have otherwise remained hidden. The open, honest and personal nature of these reports fosters empathy, often describing experiences we can relate to. That some are delivered in (near) real-time further increases the sense of connection; in that moment, we knew something of what the participant was thinking and feeling.

Action & Transformation

“Not only did it help us, the impact on participants and their way of thinking about sustainability was really interesting… the project really opened their eyes to their own patterns and behaviour and sparked some changes and definitely increased awareness” (feedback from client).

The process of self-reporting is an intervention designed to allow people to self-reflect and share aspects of their daily life; this process can also trigger participants to question their choices and everyday behaviours (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001).  The content of the Mobile Diary packs and the nature of the questions included can provoke new realisations and possibilities. For example, our self-reporting studies into sustainability in everyday life resulted in participants questioning personal behaviours and making changes in their lifestyles^[i]. For one participant, a discussion about sustainability with flatmates led to the installation of a composting unit in the household.

The interventionist nature of the method can be more intentionally activated through the inclusion of specific activities and questions within the packs. For example, in one study into sustainability we included sustainability challenges – new lifestyle habits -  that participants were asked to try and document throughout a week. These activities were particularly provocative at revealing emotional and infrastructural barriers to behaviour change.

And then…?

As the image below suggests, material generated from Mobile Diaries can be used in numerous ways. Mobile Diaries externalise aspects of people’s everyday lives through visual, tangible artefacts. These become shared resources that help us to understand current practices, provide a spring-board for ideation and allow us to envision how any future design might be taken up within the existing ecology of the participants life. For designers, the visual nature of the material allows for more active interpretation in ways not possible with written research reports.  For participants, the process of doing the Mobile Diaries means they are better equipped to reflect on and analyse their own practices, during follow up interviews and workshops (similar to primer tools), becoming active interpreters of the material and what it might mean for future designs.

The material generated through Mobile Diaries is not something to be reduced down into a traditional written report. The raw form of the material and the subjective picture it provides of the participants’ lives and world-view are essential to its immersive quality and its value for fostering empathy and connection with participants (Mattelmäki, 2005; Mattelmäki & Battarbee, 2002) ^[ii].

However, this does need to be balanced with normative business expectations of a ‘research outcome’, and the need to synthesise the data in a meaningful way for the client to then transmit to other stakeholders. Effective ways to share this tangible and personal material with those who were not directly involved is the subject of current research, e.g., (Sleeswijk Visser 2009). Our process includes the development of a multimedia ‘report’ that can support all the different formats of material generated. These reports introduce the participants through their own words and images, illuminate the themes that have emerged and identify some future possibilities to be considered. We have also found significant value in creating opportunities for co-interpretation of the material by clients and other designers, whilst this can be more time consuming, it is utlimately a more effective use of the material than simply ‘handing off the research’.

We have also found that the value of such methods is greater than their role as data collection activities. A personal connection is made with participants that can be of value well beyond the particular study. However, there is a tension between this and the day-to-day realities of client and agency practices and models which focus on deliverables and project phases, in between which there can be significant lags or breaks. There is still work to be done to articulate and communicate the value of such methods beyond their capacity to generate data ‘about people,’ and to embrace their ability to involve participants in a more ongoing and sustained way throughout the design process.

Mobile Diaries are a playful, immersive experience for the design team that allow us to discover something of the messy intricacies of participant’s daily life, valuable for both inspiring and grounding the design process as well as engaging directly with stakeholders. We’d love to connect with other designers employing similar approaches.

Acknowledgments

Big thanks to Chris Gaul for images & Will Evans for feedback and comments. Thanks also to Dr Toni Robertson and the @IDHuPLab at UTS, Digital Eskimo, Zumio, our clients & participants N.B Examples come from specific studies in which permission was granted for publication for the purposes of research. Our approach has been heavily informed by the ongoing research into generative methods inspired by Cultural Probes (Gaver, et al., 1999) and the work of Liz Sanders (www.maketools.com) as well as other research into self-reporting studies such as (Hulkko, Mattelmäki, Virtanen, & Keinonen, 2004; Masten & Plowman, 2003; Palen & Salzman, 2002).

References

Buur, J., Binder, T., & Brandt, E. (2000). Taking Video Beyond ‘Hard Data’ in User Centred Design. Participatory Design Conference PDC2000, New York, NY, USA.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T., & Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: Cultural Probes. Interactions, 21-29.
Grinter, R., & Eldridge, M. (2001). y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg. ECSCW, Amsterdam.
Hulkko, S., Mattelmäki, T., Virtanen, K., & Keinonen, T. (2004). Mobile Probes. NordiCHI 04, Tampere, Finland.
Larson, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1983). The Experience Sampling Method. In H. Reis (Ed.), Naturalistic approaches to studying social interaction: New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science: Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Masten, D., & Plowman, T. (2003). Digital Ethnography: The next wave in understanding the consumer experience. Design Management Journal, 14(2), 75-81.
Mattelmäki, T. (2005). Applying probes – from inspirational notes to collaborative insights. CoDesign, 1(2), 83-102.
Mattelmäki, T., & Battarbee, K. (2002). Empathy Probes Paper presented at the PDC 2002, Malmö, Sweden.
Palen, L., & Salzman, M. (2002). Voice-mail diary studies for naturalistic data capture under mobile conditions.  CSCW, Louisiana, USA.
Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2009). Bringing the everyday life of people into design (PhD Thesis), Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft.
Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Evenson, S. (2004)  “Taxonomy for Extracting Design Knowledge from Research Conducted During Design Cases.” Futureground 04, Melbourne, Australia.

Additional examples of other remote self-reporting techniques & studies & mobile/online tools

Digital Ethnography (pdf)

Digital Diaries

Digital Cultural Probes

Sticky Research (Video Diaries)

Revelation

7daysinmylife.com

[i] There is no way for us to tell how permanent these changes were, we can only be sure that particular practices were bought to people’s attention, and steps towards change were made.
[ii] The original Cultural Probes (Gaver 1999) were not designed to gather specific information, but rather to be a source of inspiration and empathy. Rather than being codified, transformed or translated into a report, probe material was designed to stand on its own as a rich visual resource for designers.