Bringing Users into Your Process Through Participatory Design

BRINGING USERS INTO YOUR PROCESS THROUGH PARTICIPATORY DESIGN DAVID SHERWIN AND ERIN MUNTZERT @CHANGEORDER @ERINMUNTZERT UX WEEK 2013 | 23 AUG 2013

INTRODUCTION CHALLENGE STATEMENT Create a “best-kept secret” mobile app/guide for highlights in San Francisco you won’t ﬁnd in traditional tour books or on travel websites. This guide does not show everyone the same content. It’s personalized to you. In 15 minutes in your group, create a UX storyboard (6 frames, pictures and words) that shows how on their mobile device a user would browse this guide and select a place to visit. You will have 1 minute to present your scenario to the other groups at your table. Questions that might help kickstart your design process: •Who is the intended audience? •Where would they use it? •When would they use it? •What content do you think should be included? •What functionality could be added to make this guide •more useful and desirable? •Why would they download and use the app? •How would it be personalized for each unique user? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

WHAT WERE YOUR GAPS IN KNOWLEDGE? What could the right design be? Who is our audience? Why? Where do they go? When? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. How can we reﬁne the design until it’s right?

THE STRUCTURE OF RESEARCH GENERATION create the design FOUNDATION understand needs ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION reﬁne until it’s right

THE STRUCTURE OF RESEARCH FOUNDATION GENERATION understand needs create the design ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION reﬁne until it’s right

Participatory design activities help you balance the gathering of inspiration to generate the right design, bolstered by information that helps you get your design right. understand needs create the design ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. reﬁne until it’s right

Participatory Design Cooperative Design Co-Design Co-Creation Co-Production Completely Too Much Vocabulary ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH OK, SO WHAT IS PARTICIPATORY DESIGN? Participatory design aims to bring users into the creative process. We take part in activities with users, providing them with materials for them to descriptively discuss their personal experiences and express their ideal solutions. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH THE DESIGN RESEARCH PROCESS Participatory design is a method whose use is solely dictated by your research objectives. selection happens here ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH PARTICIPATORY DESIGN IS A METHOD It should work alongside many other methods and types of design research, it isn’t “one method to rule them all.” CONCEPT STRUCTURING DIARY STUDY together is better TECHNOLOGY EXPLORATION JOURNALING CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY PARTICIPATORY DESIGN IMMERSION EXPERT CONCEPT ANALYSIS MARKET TESTING EXPLORATION frogMOB BUSINESS VALIDATION TECHNOLOGY ANALYSIS TREND SURVEYS COGNITIVE SCRAPING WALKTHROUGH COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS MARKET USABILITY ANALYSIS TESTING ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH PARTICIPATORY DESIGN IS ITERATIVE It should be used iteratively throughout the design process depending on the overall objectives, logistics, and expected outcomes of the project. CONCEPT STRUCTURING Discover Design Deliver Deploy Analysis Becomes Insights DISCOVER Insights Become Ideas DESIGN Ideas Become Products DELIVER Products Become Reality DEPLOY ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH WHY DOES PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH WORK? It helps us to communicate with people and discover what they know and feel. This helps us gain the ability to empathize with them, seeing the world from their perspective. Both users and designers can gain knowledge that isn’t easy to express through words. Framework by Liz Sanders, learn more at MakeTools.com MAKE tacit knowledge explicit knowledge explicit knowledge SAY ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. DO

DEFINING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH PROCESS 1 2 3 4 FRAMING PLANNING FACILITATING ANALYZING Identify research goals, objectives, questions and hypotheses. Deﬁne activities to use to help to (dis)prove your design hypotheses. Best practices for moderating participatory research sessions with users. Ways to make sense of your research results, which will help jumpstart your next design iteration. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

STEP 1 FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH FOUR STEPS TO FRAME YOUR RESEARCH 1 2 3 4 SELECT YOUR USER(S) CREATE YOUR GOALS ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. DEFINE WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW IDENTIFY METHODS TO USE

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH STEP 1 SELECT YOUR USER(S) Any good design starts by defining who your intended user is. To qualify your design, it is important to get specific with your user attributes. You may define multiple user groups for your research. User attributes should include: Demographics: gender, age, ethnicity, geographic location Psychographics: personality, values, interests, lifestyles Behaviors: mannerisms, actions, traits ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. USER Trendy and forward thinking visitors age 18-30 who frequent social networks, fashion and music blogs from their smart phones. They must have disposable income and travel several times per year

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH STEP 2 CREATE YOUR GOALS Start by asking your team what questions you want to answer with your research and write them down. A helpful tip to ensure you’ve created a comprehensive list of questions is to make sure you’ve used the “5W’s and an H”: who, what, when, where, why and how. Cluster and prioritize these framing questions to define your research objective(s). GOAL Framing ? When do p eople want to di scover new thing s vs. when do t hey want to plan an d why? Framing ? of What types eople vices are p de when sing most u iting hey are vis t SF? Framing ? How do people do research to explore where they want to go in SF beforehand? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. Understand what trendy, young, tech savvy, affluent visitors from out of town are looking to do in SF—and how they want to use mobile devices to find out about “best kept secrets” once they arrive in SF

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH STEP 3 DEFINE WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW We all have early ideas and assumptions related to a project. We call these our hypotheses. Some clients may have initial ideas they would like “tested” as well. Don’t be afraid to address these ideas early and often! These assumptions can serve as a jumping off point and aid in the initial content for your research. GOAL Understand what trendy, young, tech savvy, affluent visitors from out of town are looking to do in SF—and how they want to use mobile devices to find out about “best kept secrets” once they arrive in SF HY PO TH ES IS Young people are constantly on their mobile phones and are looking for them to heighten their “in the moment” experiences H Y P OT H E S I S t Our users will firs reach out to their social networks to o in find out what to d a new city H Y P OT H E S I S t kept secrets Bes e d be kept elit shoul tay exclusive to s and the “Best” ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH STEP 4 IDENTIFY METHODS TO USE Deﬁne where you think you know a lot, and have the data to back it up, versus where you have the most unanswered questions. Use the following framework to identify how concrete your questions and hypotheses are, so you can focus what types of methods you should use in your research (including participatory design). HYPOTHESIS People are more likely to use travel apps when they have never been to a city they are planning to visit. understand needs HYPOTHESIS HYPOTHESIS An ideal travel app design experience should be just like the “Wanderlust” application. The top 5 features of current mobile travel apps for college students traveling over the summer should be part of the feature set for the ‘best kept secrets’ application. create the design ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. reﬁne until it’s right

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH ACTIVITY 1 CREATE GOALS AND HYPOTHESES You’ve been hired to create a “best kept secret” mobile app/guide for highlights in San Francisco you won’t ﬁnd in traditional tour books or on travel websites. This guide does not show everyone the same content. It’s in some way personalized to the user. In 30 minutes in your group, do the following: • Deﬁne your target user(s) • Create your questions and your overall research goals • Generate 15 early design hypotheses that will fuel your participatory design research Note: Use stickies for the above content, one item per sticky. It’ll save you time later… ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH Create a “best kept secret” mobile app for highlights in San Francisco AT TR IBU TE From outside of San Francisco AT TR IBU TE Tech Savvy and owns at least 1 smartphone AT TR IBU TE Traveling for pleasure, not for work QU ES TIO N QU ES TIO N When do people want to discover new things vs. when do they want to plan and why? What types of devices are people using most when they are visiting SF? QU ES TIO N How do people do research to explore where they want to go in SF beforehand? USER Understand what trendy, young, tech savvy, affluent women from out of town are looking to do in SF and how they want to use mobile devices to find out about the best kept secrets once they arrive in SF Young people are constantly on their mobile phones and are looking for them to heighten their in the moment experiences H Y P O T H E S IS ften Our users most o t to will first reach ou rks their social netwo do to find out what to in a new city GOAL Trendy and forward thinking visitors age 18-30 who frequent Pinterest, social networks, fashion and music blogs from their smart phones. They must have disposable income and travel at least 3x/year HY PO TH ES IS ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. H Y P OT H E S I S ts should est kept secre B nd be kept elite a tay the exclusive to s “Best”

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH ACTIVITY 2 IDENTIFY METHODS TO USE In 5 minutes in your 3 person group: • Qualify your initial design hypotheses on a continuum, from identifying user needs to creating your initial designs to reﬁning them • See on which part of the spectrum most of your hypotheses live. Select methods to use based on where they are most focused on the spectrum ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FRAMING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN RESEARCH Understand what trendy, young, tech savvy, affluent women from out of town are looking to do in SF and how they want to use mobile devices to find out about the best kept secrets once they arrive in SF FOUNDATION IDEATION EVALUATION HY PO TH ES IS H Y P O T H E S IS ften Our users most o t to will first reach ou rks their social netwo do to find out what to in a new city H Y P OT H E S I S H Y P O T H E S IS Young people are constantly on their mobile phones and are looking for them to heighten their in the moment experiences ften Our users most o t to will first reach ou rks their social netwo do to find out what to in a new city rets should Best kept sec nd be kept elite a tay the exclusive to s “Best” H Y P O T H E S IS ften Our users most o t to will first reach ou rks their social netwo do to find out what to in a new city understand needs H Y P O T H E S IS ften Our users most o t to will first reach ou rks their social netwo do to find out what to in a new city H Y P OT H E S I S rets should Best kept sec nd be kept elite a tay the exclusive to s “Best” H Y P OT H E S I S rets should Best kept sec nd be kept elite a tay the exclusive to s “Best” HY PO TH ES IS S rets should Best kept sec nd be kept elite a tay the exclusive to s “Best” create the design ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. H Y P OT H E S I Young people are constantly on their mobile phones and are looking for them to heighten their in the moment experiences refine until it’s right

STEP 2 PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN SET THE STAGE Choose a location to maximize the outcomes, based on what you hope to get out of the research. Often group size and ease of access for your location are the key reasons for deciding where to conduct participatory design research. In a Professional Facility In Their Context of Use ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. Out in the World

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN SIZE IS IMPORTANT Determining the structure of the session will shape some of your more detailed planning decisions. Large groups are often sought after by the client, but can be hard to manage. Small groups or one-on-ones may not provide enough data points in the time you have to run research. It is up to you to choose the most appropriate setup for your project. Large Groups Small Groups ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. One-on-One

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN DATA CAPTURE TOOLS Don’t let data from your research activities fall through the cracks. Utilizing data capture tools is an essential part of remembering what was said, done, and made in your sessions. It’s critical to run an intensive and thoughtful analysis process to make sure the user’s needs, behaviors, and attitudes are addressed and accurate. Artifacts Notes Photos ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. Recordings

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN TYPES OF PARTICIPATORY ACTIVITIES NARRATE ACTIVITIES Participants inform us of their needs, wants, and desires through stories. CREATE ACTIVITIES Participants generate ideas and create prototypes of products, services, and experiences that would be ideal for them. PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES Participants make trade-oﬀs, connections, and deﬁnitions of value for ideas, solutions, or system content. CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES Participant direct us with regard to their preferences for how an idea or solution would become part of their lives. Adaptation of framework by Celine Pering, created while at frog ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN STEP WHEN TO USE THEM PARTICIPANT AS TEACHER PARTICIPANT AS DESIGNER NARRATE ACTIVITIES CREATE ACTIVITIES Participants inform us of their needs, wants, and desires through stories. PARTICIPANT AS DIRECTOR Participants generate ideas and create prototypes of products, services, and experiences that would be ideal for them. PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES Participants make trade-offs, connections, and definitions of value for ideas, solutions, or system content. CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES Participant direct us with regard to their preferences for how an idea or solution would become part of their lives. Adaptation of framework by Celine Pering, created while at frog understand needs create the design ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. refine until it’s right

NARRATE ACTIVITIES Memory is improved when we use structured stimuli to recall stories. Activities in this section provide thinking tools that can be used as a way to jog a participant’s memory and guide them into recollecting and generating stories. These stories help us better understand the nature of a participant’s background, build empathy and rapport, and help us relate to and understand a participant needs, wants, and desires. JOURNEY MAPPING LOVE & BREAKUP LETTER TOPICAL COLLAGE KNOWLEDGE HUNT

NARRATE ACTIVITIES JOURNEY MAPPING WHAT IT IS: People are provided with a large worksheet with a timeline or set of actions/happenings provided on the horizontal axis, and various contexts, devices, or situations on the vertical axis. They fill in the worksheet, they speak aloud, sharing stories and narrating their experience. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Gets people comfortable in both doing and talking • Creates a venue for stories you may not be able to access through everyday conversation WHEN TO USE IT: This is good to follow an interview, and can flow easily into a Create activity. EXAMPLE: Sometimes it can be hard to talk about the journey that people take through the process of being diagnosed and treated for a disease. The above is an emotional journey map that encourages patients to tell stories about how they felt in different parts of the diagnosis and treatment process, through the lens of how the treatment process felt to them. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

NARRATE ACTIVITIES LOVE & BREAKUP LETTER WHAT IT IS: Developed first by Smart Design, a personal letter is written to a product, service, or company revealing what people desire, hate, value, and expect from the objects or brands in their everyday lives. This can serve as fuel for starting to explore what areas should be addressed through your design efforts. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Great to use in a group • People really open up when sharing their feelings about abstract things like inanimate objects or brands • Forces people to relate emotions, pain points, or needs with lived experiences WHEN TO USE IT: This is a great icebreaker or first activity, as it is often very funny and gets everyone in the group sharing and listening. EXAMPLE: When redesigning the consumer facing web portal for a telecommunications company, we asked participants to write a love or break-up letter to their provider highlighting the health of their relationship, the things that were going right and wrong, and what the steps that the telecom needed to take to fix or mend their relationship. This helped us to understand in real language some of the key problems people were having with their service, and their hopes for solutions to mend the relationship for the future (or not). GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

NARRATE ACTIVITIES TOPICAL COLLAGE WHAT IT IS: Participants use provided stimuli—or create their own—in order to get at the quality of how they feel about a product, service, or experience. It inspires storytelling impulses in participants, so they have better access to stories about their subjective experiences. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Gets people comfortable both doing and talking • Doesn’t require reading literacy • Easy to understand WHEN TO USE IT: This is a great icebreaker or ﬁrst activity. Then, consider following it with a Create or Prioritize activity. EXAMPLE: When designing a new pest repellent product, frog asked mothers to put together a collage of pictures and images to describe to us what protecting their child means to them. This helped the team to understand how they view themselves, the people around them, and products and services when it comes to protecting their most valuable asset: their children. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

NARRATE ACTIVITIES KNOWLEDGE HUNT WHAT IT IS: An activity that helps participants share their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes towards topics and issues that can be hard to talk about otherwise. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Taps into a group’s collective experience • Gives people a safe space in which to get answers to questions they otherwise wouldn’t be comfortable discussing • Can be fun / feels like a game WHEN TO USE IT: This is best to use as an activity after you’ve had a chance for you and the participants to get to know each other. Consider following it with a Prioritize activity to narrow in on potential needs, or a Create activity to solve problems uncovered through the activity. EXAMPLE: Working with adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh, we used this activity to provide girls a venue to solicit advice on topics that were important to them. After they had shared their questions and provided answers, the girls marked with a star the answers that were most valuable to them. We then facilitated a conversation about why those answers were important and where they would expect to ﬁnd them. (You can ﬁnd a variant of this activity in frog’s Collective Action Toolkit.) GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CREATE ACTIVITIES Participants use activities to help us ﬁll in the blanks, creating elements of their ideal products, services, and experiences. This helps us understand the expectations of participants. It also serves to develop and validate working hypotheses for us and our larger team. Constructing activities that provide the right balance between structure and interpretation is key. INTERFACE TOOLKIT FILL IN THE BLANKS IDEAL WORKFLOW ECOSYSTEM MAPPING

CREATE ACTIVITIES INTERFACE TOOLKIT WHAT IT IS: Based on Liz Sanders’s Make Tools, participants are given designed elements to organize, alter, and build an ideal product or service to best suit their needs and priorities. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Great exercise where participants can prioritize what really matters in a ‘perfect world’ experience with the product • Fun activity that keeps people engaged by doing and making WHEN TO USE IT: This is a good activity when people are comfortable with an existing product or service and can relate to it (building an ideal website, new phone, etc.). You can follow this activity with a Prioritize activity. EXAMPLE: frog tasked participants with designing their ideal desktop home page for a new web-based operating system. These types of activities are great for when people have ﬁnished their ‘design’ and are describing their ideal experience, as it gives them stimuli to use to help them describe preferences. You can do this through conferencing software as a remote method as well. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CREATE ACTIVITIES FILL IN THE BLANKS WHAT IT IS: Once we have an abstract sense of people's priorities and interests, we can work with them in an open-ended, exploratory fashion to craft an interface design and potential content or interaction models through the use of whiteboard sketching and filling in the blank interface elements. This low-tech and lowfidelity exercise empowers each participant to build the design of their dreams. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Immediately exposes a participant’s mental model around how they would organize content or functionality • Allows personalization and tailoring by each participant EXAMPLE: We created an activity where the participant could generate their ideal TV interface. They were provided with a blank set of user interface assets on a whiteboard with a ceiling-mounted camera pointing down. A TV was placed in front of them that showed their designs in a 10-foot view. This activity was preceded by two Narrate activities to understand what would content would be most relevant for their interface, based on their TV-watching habits in different situations. WHEN TO USE IT: This must follow a Narrate activity or a set of priming activities, so they are thinking of content that may populate the interface. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CREATE ACTIVITIES IDEAL WORKFLOW WHAT IT IS: This activity aims to understand participant workflows with services or systems in which users are very comfortable, by asking users to set up their ideal experience under different circumstances using lo-fi materials. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Gets participants thinking about what really matters to them regarding the system by taking the technology out of the equation • Helps prioritize and understand key “use cases” by participants and how they change over a period of time, or under different circumstances • Great for understanding complex systems and utilizing participants as experts EXAMPLE: frog was tasked with designing an electronic trading platform through which users can monitor and analyze real-time financial market data movements and place trades. Participants were brought in to understand their ideal experience with the portal and for us to understand their information hierarchy needs on such a complex device. Through an activity in which the participants constructed their ideal screen states on a “multi-screen” setup for a variety of situations, we understood the importance of building an customizable platform that behaved differently based on time of day. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. WHEN TO USE IT: When participants are using a service or system—especially expert systems—on a daily basis and it is top of mind. Often, the solutions are less important than the stories. GENERATION EVALUATION

CREATE ACTIVITIES ECOSYSTEM MAPPING WHAT IT IS: This activity aims to uncover the key components of a specific “ecosystem” within a participant’s life. It is great for determining what makes things part of this grouping and relationships amongst the parts of the “ecosystem.” We have used this from business applications (such as this example), to mapping social relationships in the activity “Rings of Connection” in frog’s Collective Action Toolkit, to visualizing a person’s “product world” in their home. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Helps us visualize intangible social connections and communication priorities • Doesn’t require literacy, easy to understand EXAMPLE: When designing a new consumer-facing web portal for small and medium size businesses, it was important for us to know and understand the types of relationships that people valued and how those relationships were fulfilled by their communication needs. We did this mapping exercise to clarify how relationships and communication methods worked together in business. WHEN TO USE IT: This can be done as a great icebreaker or first activity. Then, consider following with another Create activity that allows them to design for what they created here. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES Projectionthe waysas a way to understandservices and CARD SORT Understand works people value the products, the expectations of participants. information theyactivities that provide the right balance between structure and CHANNEL SURFING Constructing utilize. These methods help participants and designers think through trade-oﬀs, connections, and hierarchies, CONCEPT RANKING interpretation is key. Fill-in the blank activities for keyparticipants immerse into a world help use and often takes place to clarify information or evaluate ﬁt VALUE RANKING that can help developincludes text, image, and iconography. cases or tasks. The stimuli and validate working hypotheses for yourself and your larger team.

PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES CARD SORT WHAT IT IS: A technique used to explore how participants group items into categories or ﬁnd relationships between concepts, subjects, features, and so forth. (Note: We are stretching traditional uses of Card Sorting methods here for more creative aims.) WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • A way to discover how participants classify and categorize information • Helps you ﬁnd out what participants view as valuable and invaluable • Easy to execute WHEN TO USE IT: Great for trying to understand taxonomies and how to structure and prioritize information for a system you’re designing. Also works well as an evaluative tool to understand participant’s mental models. EXAMPLE: For a healthcare project, frog asked participants to sort through and prioritize news sources, retail environments, hospitals, health advocates and experts, media outlets and personalities and governmental organizations they believed were credible experts when it came to helping them learn about health, wellness, and nutrition. This helped us to better understand people’s mental models around what makes someone authentic and credible as a source of information. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES CHANNEL SURFING WHAT IT IS: This variation of a card sort allows participants to prioritize which actions, services, or functionality they would prefer to have on different devices (such as PC, mobile, tablet) or be able to access through other people or services (such as phone support, a retail branch, a friend, and so forth.) WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Creates a venue for discussing issues that happen due to functionality/service gaps • Understand trade-offs that happen due to shifting needs from channel to channel EXAMPLE: Our client wanted to understand what services they could provide would be most useful on mobile device, tablet, or both. We set up a card sort where cards on the left were mobile, cards on the right were tablet, and cards in the middle were shared between devices. This allowed us to understand what content was necessary to create more seamless transitions between devices for those content types. The participant’s devices were used as reference points in the sort. frog has conducted this with up to 8 different channels for reaching content or services as prompts. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. WHEN TO USE IT: Best used when you don’t know what devices you should target for an app or services. This can be done as an activity after an interview. Consider following this with a Create activity to focus on addressing service gaps or pain points that emerge from this. GENERATION EVALUATION

PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES CONCEPT RANKING WHAT IT IS: Participants are asked to rank a set of products or concepts on a scale from most to least desirable to determine user preference. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Helps to prioritize concepts based on what the user ﬁnds most valuable and appealing • Great for understanding what really matters to users regarding your designs • Helps to understand what people really care about regarding your design WHEN TO USE IT: When you have multiple concepts and need to make a decision around which best suits the users needs. Works especially well when there are physical forms, paper prototypes, or digital prototypes that they can customize or adjust at will. EXAMPLE: When developing a wristwatch for women, paper mock-ups with exact dimensions were created so that participants could not only get a sense of look and feel, but also discuss ﬁt when making judgements and ranking the concepts. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES VALUE RANKING WHAT IT IS: Participants are asked to rank products or services based on “value” attributes to deﬁne what attributes will be perceived as desirable and connect with the user. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Helps both the participants and designers to identify the aspirational attributes of a product or service • Can contribute to brand strategy EXAMPLE: Designing for a new product category for a consumer brand, the client was interested in understanding how the new product line would be described by consumers. We used a set of key words and adjectives in which the participants ranked which words they would most likely use to describe the products. This helped us to make recommendations towards how the client would want to position these products in the market. WHEN TO USE IT: When you’re trying to understand how people describe the value of the concept, product, service, or experience. Use it when your are trying to meaningfully align products with user expectations. It works well towards the end of a participatory session when the user understands the product, service or experience concepts that have been generated or provided. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES Projection worksabout way to understand thein the story of a of participants. These activities are as a immersing the participant expectations COMIC STRIP design. This may activities that provide otherwise presented with the CUSTOMIZING Constructing be verbal, kinetic, visual, or the right balance between structure and SCENARIOS goal of eliciting feedback on the design itself. By being in context or SIMULATING EXPERIENCES interpretation is key. Fill-in the blank activities help participants immerse into a world simulating a product or service experience, participants are able to more INTERCEPT EVALUATION thatexperience adevelopdesignvalidate working hypotheses for yourself and your larger fully can help concept and or direction and describe their ideal preferences for how the concept would best ﬁt their lives. team.

CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES COMIC STRIP WHAT IT IS: Participants react to their ideas re-presented in a simple comic storyboard, exploring their context of use and how people beneﬁt as a result of them. The participant then provides feedback on the individual ideas and whether the story feels real to them. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • This grounds ideas generated during a participatory session in a form of story that people can connect with and react to immediately • Can elicit actionable feedback on what ideas make most sense to move forward, and why they are important • Easy to understand/doesn’t require complete literacy based on how it’s executed EXAMPLE: When doing co-design work with adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa, a frog facilitator listened to the girls’ ideas from their generative activities and created a comic strip that strung their ideas together. She then shared the comic strip with the girls, immediately soliciting their feedback through value ranking that was conducted by girl leaders. WHEN TO USE IT: This is a powerful way to end a participatory design session. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES CUSTOMIZING SCENARIOS WHAT IT IS: An individual or group is taken through a product narrative or scenario, then asked to give feedback and customize the scenario to their own life and experiences to make it better suit their needs. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Helps people to better relate to the product, service, or experience concept you are presenting • Helps ground scenarios in real-life events and people’s personal narratives • Participants feel ownership over product or design WHEN TO USE IT: This activity should be used when you have a product concept and narrative that you would like to ground in people’s real lived experiences. EXAMPLE: When designing a new service for how media will be used on vacations, we went into the homes of families, described our ideas in the form of a scenario, and then had participants ﬁll out a worksheet on how they would make the concept relevant to their own vacation. They would then add in details around how they would typically travel and what features they would be most likely to use from the concept. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES SIMULATING EXPERIENCES WHAT IT IS: When being in-context with participants is not feasible, it becomes valuable to run activities that get them into the mindset of the real experience of using the product or service. These activities enact and enable users to feel like what they are doing is the real thing. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Simulating real-life situations helps users give more empathetic and directed feedback on the product or service • Can move tangible design work more quickly into more rigorous evaluative testing WHEN TO USE IT: This activity should be used when you have a product concept and narrative that you would like to ground in a person’s lived experience. EXAMPLE: frog was tasked to look at new technologies and changing customer behaviors and expectations of the future in-car experience. We designed in-car prototypes as provocations and then simulated experiences with new and ﬁrst time drivers to kickstart conversations about what their needs were and how they’d intersect with new technological solutions. The users were able to provide rich, valuable feedback. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES INTERCEPT EVALUATIONS WHAT IT IS: Intercepting participants when they are in the context of when and where they may be using a product provides valuable insight into how participants would complete a task or utilize your product or service ideas. WHY IS IT VALUABLE: • Helps establish ﬁt for a range of ideas • Participants are already in the mindset of the task at hand • Quick, actionable feedback to inform your next design iteration WHEN TO USE IT: This activity works very well when there is not a lot of budget or time and you are hoping to go ‘wide’ rather than ‘deep’ with feedback. The output from this activity will include quotes, photos, and stories that can help you tune your approach. EXAMPLE: frog set up a ‘lemonade stand’ in the heart of Union Square in San Francisco to try out a new product that provided users with context-aware information while they are shopping. We tested it with people who are already completing the task we were designing for, which helped us gain valuable insight we could immediately act on. GENERATION ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EVALUATION

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN CONSTRUCTING YOUR OWN ACTIVITIES All of the previous activities have the same building blocks. You can customize or build your own activities quickly if you ﬁrst outline your goals, inputs, and outputs. ACTIVITY OBJECTIVE ACTIVITY INPUTS START ACTIVITY What’s the goal for your activity? Who are the participants for the activity? What hypotheses or questions will the activity address? What information & knowledge do they bring to the activity? Facilitator outlines goal of the activity, provides appropriate information or materials to begin How does this activity help fulﬁll your research objectives? ACTIVITY STEPS What materials & unique tools does the activity require? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. END ACTIVITY Facilitator draws necessary conclusions and materials into the next activity or closes the session ACTIVITY OUTPUT What are the resulting design ideas you need? What information do you want to gather from the activity? How will you capture the information and ideas you generate?

ACTIVITY OBJECTIVE ACTIVITY INPUTS WHAT IS THE GOAL FOR YOUR ACTIVITY? WHO ARE THE PARTICIPANTS? WHAT HYPOTHESES OR QUESTIONS WILL THE ACTIVITY ADDRESS? WHAT INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE DO THEY BRING TO THE ACTIVITY? HOW DOES THIS ACTIVITY HELP FULFILL YOUR RESEARCH OBJECTIVES? WHAT MATERIALS & UNIQUE TOOLS DOES THE ACTIVITY REQUIRE? STEPS FOR THE PARTICIPATORY ACTIVITY WHAT SHOULD THE ACTIVITY OUTPUT BE? 1 TIME: ______________ WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU WANT TO GATHER FROM THE ACTIVITY, AND HOW WILL YOU CAPTURE IT? TIME: ______________ WHAT ARE THE RESULTING DESIGN IDEAS YOU NEED? TIME: ______________ HOW WILL YOU CAPTURE THE INFORMATION AND IDEAS GENERATED BY THIS ACTIVITY? 3 5 TIME: ______________ TIME: ______________ TIME: ______________ ©2013 frog, created by David Sherwin and Erin Sanders / www.frogdesign.com / no public distribution without permission ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. 2 4 6

ACTIVITY OBJECTIVE Increase a girl’s comfort in providing opinions on discussion topics WHAT IS THE GOAL FOR YOUR ACTIVITY? What topics are girls thinking about? What topics are they struggling to discuss with a group, but want WHAT HYPOTHESES OR QUESTIONS WILL THE ACTIVITY ADDRESS? What topics would girls want to discuss between groups—especially through digital means? HOW DOES THIS ACTIVITY HELP FULFILL YOUR RESEARCH OBJECTIVES? ACTIVITY INPUTS STEPS FOR THE PARTICIPATORY ACTIVITY Groups of 15 girls + 2 facilitators WHO ARE THE PARTICIPANTS? No design ideas needed 1 TIME: ______________ 2 TIME: ______________ Local knowledge of what daily issues they struggle with —reproductive health, education, family, money, and WHAT INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE DO THEY BRING TO THE ACTIVITY? WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU WANT TO GATHER FROM THE ACTIVITY, AND HOW WILL YOU CAPTURE IT? The most valuable info from the girls will be captured in “Wisdom strands,” we will photograph them and identify 3 TIME: ______________ 4 TIME: ______________ Index cards Markers Hole punch String WHAT MATERIALS & UNIQUE TOOLS DOES THE ACTIVITY REQUIRE? WHAT SHOULD THE ACTIVITY OUTPUT BE? WHAT ARE THE RESULTING DESIGN IDEAS YOU NEED? What topics would girls NOT want to talk about in a semi-public venue such as this? 5 TIME: ______________ ©2013 frog, created by David Sherwin and Erin Sanders / www.frogdesign.com / no public distribution without permission ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. 6 TIME: ______________ HOW WILL YOU CAPTURE THE INFORMATION AND IDEAS GENERATED BY THIS ACTIVITY?

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN PILOT YOUR ACTIVITIES EARLY AND OFTEN As soon as you have pulled together a draft of your activity, with a clear understanding of your goals, inputs, and outputs, you should immediately try it out in a draft form with someone. The more time you spend working with the activity in theory, the more likely you’re missing issues that could be quickly corrected. Don’t be afraid to change activities if you aren’t receiving the required output—even when you’re in the field. EXAMPLE: We were creating a participatory activity that helped people talk about where they fulfill key tasks that had to do with money management. The first iterations resembled a game, but as we piloted the activity with 4 to 5 people before we went into the field, it was clear that we had to redo the activity so it could be done with cards arranged on a surface rather than resemble a board game. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN COMMON ISSUES CAUGHT BY PILOTING ACTIVITY GOAL UNCLEAR • Questions or hypotheses aren’t clear enough to come out in the activity • No clear target for final content created in activity SEQUENCING ISSUES • Content created in final step doesn’t connect to next activity • Information from previous activity isn’t formatted to plug into this activity OVERDESIGNED, INFLEXIBLE TOOLS • Content can’t be personalized by participant • Tools can’t be manipulated • Fidelity of tools is wrong (too high for generative, too low for evaluative) • Your design of tools adds cultural bias ACTIVITY STEPS TOO COMPLEX • Too much complexity in each step (should be just one to two actions) TOO BIG A GROUP • Individual work not allowed TOOLS KILL OFF CONVERSATION • Tool completion prioritized over conversation LOCATION • Space for session is wrong for the activity PRIMING ISSUES • Participants aren’t primed to enter the activity (no context or narration) MISMATCHED CONTENT • Participant can’t “see themselves” in the activity CREATIVITY ISN’T ENCOURAGED • Constraints aren’t adjusted throughout activity (example: reality constraints are removed or added provoke response) ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. POOR FACILITATION • Facilitator closes down or steers conversation OUTPUT FROM ACTIVITY WRONG • Wrong fidelity specified • Lack of consistency in requested representation of ideas • Lack of structure to ideas • Lack of description for ideas • Ideas not appropriate for research objective

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN SEQUENCING ACTIVITIES When putting together a participatory design session, priming and sequencing are of the utmost importance. Build rapport and create a story arc for the participant with certain emotions you want them to feel throughout the session. It’s hard to start a participatory design session without some form of narration to prime generative activities. You can get around this if you’re strapped for time by providing pre-work to participants for you to review before you arrive. PRIORITIZE CONTEXTUALIZE END START CREATE NARRATE ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

PLANNING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN SEQUENCING ACTIVITIES Participatory sessions are often paired with other research methods. Here’s an example of where you should include participatory activities as part of an in-home contextual inquiry session. 10 mins 30 mins 40 mins 35 mins Set-up Foundational Interview Tour/Demo In-Depth Interview Participatory Activties Rapport + Understanding 5 mins Diagram by Cobie Everdell at frog ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

STEP 3 FACILITATING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

FACILITATING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN BEST PRACTICES FOR FACILITATION The best way to get better at facilitating Participatory Design Sessions is by piloting activities and practice with different user groups. Here are some pointers to remember for when you facilitate: 1. Make sure to come prepared. Being prepared will put you at ease and cause the session to run more smoothly. 2. Develop your own personal style. Don’t try to imitate someone else. Trust your gut and be yourself. 3. Be a reflective practitioner. Facilitating takes practice to improve. Do it multiple times to learn what works and doesn’t work for you. Reflect and revise your style based on feedback from your peers, as well as the quality of the experience your participants had. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FACILITATING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN SPEAKING AND DELIVERY STEP Here are some skills to work on, if you’d like to become a master facilitator of participatory design activities: 1. Develop delivery style to suit the audience and situation 2. Handle questions, comments and diﬃcult audiences in a calm, collected manner 3, Engage the audience throughout the facilitation by asking openended questions 4, Disrupt long silences by telling an anecdote or story about the project topic 5. Interact with the participants in a human way ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FACILITATING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FACILITATING GROUP DYNAMICS When in groups, participants fall into one of the following stances. Dialogue tends to break down if one person is moving the dialogue and everyone else follows, or if most of the participants bystand or oppose the activity. MOVERS without bystanders, there is no perspective BYSTANDERS without opposers, there is no correction The Four-Player Framework by David Kantor without movers, there is no direction FOLLOWERS without followers, there is no completion OPPOSERS ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

FACILITATING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FACILITATING GROUP DYNAMICS Use the following strategies with groups in order to achieve the best dialogue between participants and engagement with your activities. participants you Pair Similar Users Take Charge Actively Engage Be Agile Bring similar participants together. It will provide common ground for a discussion and helps to make others feel valued. It is important to feel comfortable to managing dynamics of the session. Feeling comfortable with your surroundings and the materials being presenting to build conﬁdence. Actively engage the more silent personalities in the group to ensure that everyone is being heard and that you are getting good data from all users. Don’t be afraid to mix it up if something isn’t working. If the session doesn’t feel quite right, make changes by changing group dynamics and participant structure. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

STEP 4 ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN Try the following process to analyze the data gathered from participatory activities (if you haven’t utilized any other methods). Note: It takes at least 1.5x to 2x the amount of time to analyze the data derived from a participatory activity as it does for the time it took you to conduct it. CULL: Remove incomplete, irrelevant, or untrusted data NORMALIZE: Ensure the data is consistent in format and presentation REVIEW: Scrutinize the activity output DOCUMENT: Capture ﬁndings from the activity when it’s still fresh ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN Analysis of participatory activities can require more than traditional sticky note clustering… RAW DATA TRANSCRIBED DATA PARTICIPANT CLUSTERING OPPORTUNITY CLUSTERS Opportunity 1 PATTERN RECOGNITION Opportunity 1 Notes Participant 01 CRITERIA Focus Areas Participant 02 Design Ideas Opportunity 2 Opportunity 2 Photos Participant 03 Participant 04 Design Principles Opportunity 3 Activities Opportunity 3 Archetypes = Behavioral data = Participatory design activity data ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN CULL Reduce the signal to noise ratio to effectively analyze your activities. Remove the data that you believe to be irrelevant to your research objective and desired outcomes. Bad data leads to bad research. If you don’t have full confidence in the data point you’ve written down, you don’t trust the truthfulness of the participant, or the activity changed dramatically mid-research, you may have to take data and/or findings out of consideration and move on. Don’t be afraid to scratch participant data to preserve the integrity of your findings. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN NORMALIZE As you begin piloting your activity, consider in what way you’ll capture your data. Normalization should happen during the research, not after you’re done with it. We often create custom Excel spreadsheets to record quotes, observations, or ﬁnal artifacts during the activity in a consistent format. You’ll need to look at: Spoken quotes from the participant. Many of these quotes will relate to the activity, but at points through the activity they will disengage from it and share valuable information that didn’t come up earlier in the research. Your observations about what the participants are saying, doing, and making. Watching the session may inspire your own design ideas, but be sure to label them as your hypotheses and not the participant’s ideas. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. The artifacts that have been created. You need not only the ﬁnal end state of what they made for your analysis, but also photographs of various points in the activity that show how their thinking may have evolved throughout the activity.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN REVIEW Take in the analysis from the activities, participant by participant. Flag the quotes and observations that are most relevant for each individual person. Summarize brieﬂy what you learned from that person across those activities. Then look across all participants for high-level trends and similarities that should be considered. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN REVIEW You can use the following activities to make sense of the output of your participatory activities. Any analysis activity that you conduct should drive towards a visualization or narrative that helps explain your ﬁndings. NARRATE ACTIVITIES Analysis Method: Journey Mapping. We will take the outputs from narrative-based activities and create diagrams that summarize key actions or activities across the day-to-day lives of participants. CREATE ACTIVITIES Analysis Method: Artifact Review. Post up artifacts in your workspace. Place quotes onto the artifacts that they spoke about what they liked and disliked. Write themes onto sticky notes and summarize takeaways. PRIORITIZE ACTIVITIES Analysis Method: Frequency Distribution and Gap Analysis. This technique helps you identify trends across all of your participants in their preferences and priorities. This draws from analysis techniques for card sorting. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. CONTEXTUALIZE ACTIVITIES Analysis Method: Preference Distribution. This is an alternate method of visualizing frequency distribution, but done in a manner that does not appear to be quantitative in nature. This is most useful for small sample sizes.

ANALYZING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN DOCUMENT FINDING 1 Most people only trust social recommendation when paired with a critic’s review. Six of the eight research participants, when creating their ideal TV show recommendation widget, were doubtful about the value of friend recommendations unless they were supporting a quote from a trusted critic. “I don’t care what movies Bobby’s watching, or which one he likes. I care about which ones Roger Ebert and Bobby likes.” —Elaine, 27, Teacher EXAMPLE: JOURNEY MAPPING When conducting Journey Mapping, we create summaries of what we’ve learned from the participants to refine and tighten our view of customer journeys or lifecycles through artifacts like this. These draft diagrams are then digitized and presented with the findings. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission. EXAMPLE: WRITTEN FINDING WITH SUPPORTING QUOTE Findings should clearly summarize trends or patterns seen across feedback from participatory design participants. Quotes should always be included to support key findings.

ACTIVITY 3 CREATE & PILOT AN ACTIVITY Design and pilot an activity that will help you get closer to creating a personalized “best-kept secret” mobile app/guide for highlights in your hometown(s). Use your hypotheses you’ve generated to help guide your decision. Step 1: In 25 minutes in your group, create a draft of an activity that you’d like to conduct that will help you answer one or more of your research questions. Step 2: Pilot your activity with another group. (We’ll help you ﬁnd a partner group.) Take notes, quotes, and photograph states of the activity as if you were going to analyze it. Each group gets 10 minutes to pilot their activity with 2 to 3 people. Step 3: Switch! The groups that were participants can now pilot their activities. ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

PROJECT DEBRIEF What did you learn about planning and creating activities? What went well that you’d do again in the future? What would you do diﬀerent next time? How will you bring this into your practice as a designer? Within your organization? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

Download our free toolkit for participatory design in your community: frogdesign.com/cat It’s open source for nonproﬁt work— it can be adapted and translated at will ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

RESOURCES Here’s some of the folks that we referenced throughout this presentation. Check out their work! Liz Sanders’s Make Tools: http://maketools.com/ Smart Design’s The Breakup Letter on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/11854531 David Kantor’s Four Player Model: http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-fpmodel.php ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

THANK YOU! Please keep in touch and let us know how participatory design research becomes part of your design practice! Erin Muntzert e.muntzert@gmail.com @erinmuntzert David Sherwin david@changeorderblog.com @changeorder changeorderblog.com snag these will ya? ©2014 frog. all rights reserved. no public distribution or reproduction without permission.

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Bringing Users into Your Process Through Participatory Design

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