Gearing up!
A Designer-Focused Evaluation of Ideation Tools for Connected Products
Dries De Roeck, Pieter Jan Stappers, Achiel Standaert

2
A Designer-Focused Evaluation of Ideation Tools for Connected Products

Connected products
3

4
Connected products

Connected products, the issue
5
• Technology dominant approach
‣ needs to be stretched (Grufberg, Bannon)
• Prototyping & sketching
‣ Requirements of tools (Frens, Buxton)
• Limited human centred influence
‣ Lacking in literature (Koreshoff)
⚑

6
“There is both need and opportunity to
develop understandings and design
approaches that consider the deeper
human-centred issues of the IoT.” Koreshoff, 2013

Designer focussed
7
• Core competences
‣ Human dimension
‣ Translation of contextual elements (Sleeswijk-Visser)
‣ Importance of meaning (Verganti)
• Products are increasingly digital
‣ Physical and digital need to provide a coherent
experience
• Tools for designing connected products
‣ Are too focussed on a final result (Frens) ⌖

Ideation tools
8
• Supportive during a creative activity
‣ Creativity support tools (Schneiderman)
• Support exploratory search
• Enable collaboration
• Provide rich history keeping
• Design with low thresholds, high ceilings and wide walls


An evaluative study
9

Study setup
Design assignment
introduction
move
Your goal is to define a concept that stimulates people to consumption off-peak. This goal should be achieved
their con-nected
energy using power consumption data coming from digitally by power meters in people’s homes.
consumption data
Each household has a ‘smart energy meter’ in their homes. This
means that the energy consumption of each household is logged
digitally. Your product concept should make use of this data in
some way. Do note that your goal is to re-interpret this data, and
not (only) display it as a graph or other visualisation.
4 important facts!
1. The defined concept should be primarily used indoors. So
focus on an in-house product.
2. All customers of the product rely on traditional energy
sources. This means solar panels or other alternative energy
sources are not available within the context of this assignment.
With the ever increasing people living in cities, the power grid
becomes very stressed at a couple of peak moments throughout
the day. In order to maintain a healthy power grid, there is a
clear need to motivate and enable people to move their power
consumption to other times of day.
3. You can assume that all devices in the house can be switched
on or off by a digital system.
4. We focus on in-house prodcuts, but those can be used by
other people living in the neighbourhood.
9h00
21h00 03h00 9h00
What’s it called"
How does it work?
Describe your idea in one sentence
This product is useful because Express it 3 ...
claims about your product
Storyboard
9isualise the concept step by step using a maximum of sketches.
)ocus on the core elements of the idea who is involved what is the setting how does the
interaction take place
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• Evaluative study
‣ 2 design tools
• Lillidots (De Roeck, 2011)
• tBPM (Luebbe, 2011)
‣ Reference case
• Nesta dynamic demand challenge
‣ 30 participants
• 15 per condition
• Working in groups of 3
• Master students industrial design
‣ 3 hour session
• Tool intro, ideation
• Presentation on template

tBPM
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Ideation tool : tangible process blocks
Using tangible process blocks, a product
idea can be mapped out in a structured
way.
Step 1. Determine the start and end of the
process the product will help accomplish
Step 2. Map the main activities in
between
Step 3. Enrich the process with gateways,
documents and role information.
Basic example
Express yourself!
How does it work?
The event block. This
block is used to mark the
start and ending of the
process or sub-processes.
The activity block. This
block is used to represent
the work performed by a
person or a system.
The data block. This block
represents information
processed or required.
Such as files, documents,
digital information,...
The gateway block.
Gateways are used
to split and join the
process flow. The
can be used to
create parallel or
alternative paths.
Draw arrows to
connect blocks
together.
Create groups
(swimlanes) of blocks to
assign a person, object or
environment to specific
actions.
The blocks should be placed on a large
sheet of paper. This underlying sheet can
be used to draw arrows, make
connections between blocks, or annotate
whatever information you think is
relevant.
On the piece of paper you can also use
group blocks together that are relevant to
a specific object, person or environment.
person 1
Information
about
amount of
water drank.
Did I drink
enough water
today?
Start tracking
water
consumption
Did the
person
drink?
no
yes
Measure level of
water in glass
Send
consumption
data
water
usage
saved
data

Lillidots
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Title sheet Basic example How does it work? Lillidot sheet(s)
lillidot ___________
lillidot ___________
lillidot ___________
Where is this lillidot placed
Why is it placed there
Where is this lillidot placed
Why is it placed there
What does this lillidot do?
What does this lillidot do?
First...
First...
then...
then...
then...
then...
then...
then...
then...
then...
then...
to finally
to finally
Ideation tool : lillidots
Lillidots is a method which structures a
connected products idea. Each idea
consits of one title sheet and multiple
lillidot sheets.
Step 1 : Identify actors in context
(objects, people or environments)
Step 2 : Generate ideas through mockups
and acting out
Step 3 : Create sets of lillidots, recombine,
adapt,...
!
lillidot ___________
then...
lillidot ___________
then...
lillidot on glass
“tracks water level”
first
“checks level”
then
“shouts it to
anyone listening”
The lillidot sheets are used during the
ideation process to structure ideas. In
order to generate ideas, create quick
dirty mockups to explore ideas.
Title:
Describe what you’d like this set
of lillidots to do
Describe/visualise how
this set of lillidots functions
Use this space to visualise the
appearance of your lillidots or
lillidot set - you can also use the
back of this sheet (or use a
seperate sheet)
!
!
!
Where is this lillidot placed
Why is it placed there
What does this lillidot do?
First...
then...
then...
then...
to finally
Lillidot
A lillidot is something of variable
size that can attach itself to any
object, person or space. A lillidot
can tell you everything about the
object or person it is attached to
or that it observes (i.e. it can
sense, measure, track, etc...).
A lillidot can work together and
communicate with other lillidots
independent of their location. In
addition, a lillidot can
communicate with you, for
instance via sounds, lights,
vibrations, a display,... By creating
a set of lillidots, you can make
elements of your environment
interact with each other.
Title:
Describe what you’d like this set
of lillidots to do
Describe/visualise how
this set of lillidots functions
!
!
Where is this lillidot placed
Why is it placed there
What does this lillidot do?
First...
then...
then...
then...
to finally
Where is this lillidot placed
Why is it placed there
What does this lillidot do?
First...
then...
then...
then...
to finally
title of lillidot set
“detects the amount of
water and sends it to a
mobile phone” lillidot on phone
“talks to the glass
of water”
first
“receives data”
then
“displays data”
then
“tells the owner
how much s/he
has been drinking”
Mockups
acting out

Analysis - process focus
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•Quantitative
‣ Creativity Support Index (Carroll, 2009)
• Collaboration, enjoyment, exploration, expressiveness,
immersion results worth the effort
‣ 27 questionnaires (13 lillidot, 14 BPMN)
•Qualitative
‣ Observation (recordings as supportive material)
‣ Informal feedback after sessions

Analysis - result focus
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•Quantitative
‣ Novelty appropriateness ranking (Sternberg Lubbart)
‣ Ranking by 7 external experts
‣ Senior teaching staff, industry partners
‣ Qualitative
‣ Product or service dominant focus (Dewit, Rubino)
#

Findings - Quantitative
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•No significant differences
‣ Mann-Whitney U Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests
•Differences in CSI factors
‣ Collaboration (tBPM scores higher)
‣ Immersion (lillidots scores higher)
$

Findings - Qualitative
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•Overall
‣ Structuring of ideas
‣ Keeping track after an ideation session
• tBPM
‣ Visual overview of the result
‣ Group work (confirmation of CSI factor)
• More focus on one activity
• Lillidots
‣ More accessible to get going
‣ Higher immersion (confirmation of CSI factor)
• Materiality
• Low fidelity prototyping %

•Be actor centered
•Allow expression in multiple ways
•Provide an overview of the overall interaction
between actor and actions
•Balance tangible and service components
•Trigger (detailed) interaction definition

Sure thing, but…
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• Perceived usefulness of, yet another, tool
‣ Be wary of touching the core values of design
• Process should still be ‘designerly’ (Stolterman)
‣ Recover / use parts
• Structuring ideas (more widely applicable)
• Connected products (actor networks)

@driesderoeck
dries.deroeck@uantwerpen.be
driesdr.ramdac.be

A. Identify actors B. Create specify actor network C. Define outcome
actor washing
machine
washing
machine
living
room
John
John
How is this done?
firstly ...
secondly ...
thirdly ...
fourthly ...
What does this actor do?
keeps track of
status and saves it
somewhere
washing
status
wants to receive
information when his
wash is done
checks his device for
wash status
indicates that he
wants a notification
when wash is done
receives notification
on device
Identify actors based on contextual
analysis. Actors can be objects, persons
or environments. These are written on
circular discs.
By placing the actors on template sheets, actions can be assigned to a specific actor.
Firstly, a general action is expressed. Secondly, the template can be folded open and
the action can be made more specific. By making each action explicit, the interaction
between people, objects and environments becomes well defined.
A consolidated version of the actor
network can be created through a
storyboard or (interactive) prototype.
#$$$%
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