research-article

Participatory Design Tools: Leveraging Materiality and Familiarity to Adapt Unconventional Materials into Design Tools

Authors:

Awais Hameed Khan,

Ben MatthewsAuthors Info & Claims

C&C '23: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Creativity and Cognition

Pages 399 - 412

https://doi.org/10.1145/3591196.3593339

Published: 19 June 2023 Publication History

Abstract

As participatory design approaches proliferate into mainstream industry practice, it becomes important for designers to consider how design tools, methods and practices can be made more accessible for non-designers — fostering participatory mindsets. We explore how materiality and familiarity of design tools impact participation, by investigating an off-the-shelf, familiar material — the Rubik's Cube, for application possibilities as an unconventional design tool. We report on a series of workshops with design practitioners and educators, that find disassociating design methods from traditional materials, opens new possibilities for methodological innovations, while revealing promising avenues to improve participation. We categorise findings into three themes: material properties, staging considerations, and emergent practices. This is supplemented by two Illustrative examples of emergent applications of using Rubik's Cubes to augment (1) de Bono's random input method; and (2) creating dynamic persona states. The emergent applications present new material possibilities enabling design methods to innovate and evolve.

References

[1]

Christopher Alexander. 1971. The state of the art in design methods. DMG newsletter 5, 3 (1971), 3–7.

[2]

Asunción Álvarez and Tom Ritchey. 2015. Applications of General Morphological Analysis. 4, 1 (2015).

[3]

Thomas Binder and Johan Redström. 2006. Exemplary design research. In Design Research Society Wonderground International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal.

[4]

Erling Bjögvinsson, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2012. Design things and design thinking: Contemporary participatory design challenges. Design issues 28, 3 (2012), 101–116.

[5]

Eli Blevis. 2007. Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’07), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 503–512.

Digital Library

[6]

Edward de Bono. 1992. Serious creativity: Using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas. HarperCollins New York.

[7]

Joran W. Booth, Elkin A. Taborda, Karthik Ramani, and Tahira Reid. 2016. Interventions for teaching sketching skills and reducing inhibition for novice engineering designers. Design studies 43, (2016), 1–23.

[8]

Eva Brandt. 2006. Designing exploratory design games: a framework for participation in Participatory Design? In Proceedings of the ninth conference on Participatory design: Expanding boundaries in design - Volume 1 (PDC ’06), Association for Computing Machinery, Trento, Italy, 57–66.

Digital Library

[9]

Eva Brandt, Thomas Binder, and Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders. 2012. Tools and techniques: ways to engage telling, making and enacting. In Routledge international handbook of participatory design. Routledge, 165–201.

[10]

Tim Brown. 2009. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. HarperCollins, New York.

[11]

Bill Buxton. 2010. Sketching user experiences: getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufmann.

[12]

Stuart Candy. 2018. Gaming Futures Literacy: The Thing from the Future. In Transforming the Future. Routledge.

[13]

Alan Cooper. 2004. The inmates are running the asylum:[Why high-tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity]. Sams Indianapolis, IN.

[14]

Nigel Cross. 2001. Designerly ways of knowing: Design discipline versus design science. Design issues 17, 3 (2001), 49–55.

[15]

Nigel Cross. 2007. Forty years of design research. Design Studies 28, 1 (January 2007), 1–4.

[16]

Discover. 1986. The Perplexing Life of Erno Rubik. Retrieved August 8, 2020 from http://www.puzzlesolver.com/puzzle.php?id=29;page=15

[17]

John Partomo Djajadiningrat, William W. Gaver, and J. W. Fres. 2000. Interaction relabelling and extreme characters: methods for exploring aesthetic interactions. In Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, 66–71.

Digital Library

[18]

Mark Emmons. 2014. Sunnyvale: Rubik's Cube masters solve colorful mysteries — in seconds. The Mercury News. Retrieved August 8, 2020 from https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/02/09/sunnyvale-rubiks-cube-masters-solve-colorful-mysteries-in-seconds/

[19]

Daniel Fallman. 2003. Design-oriented human-computer interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’03), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 225–232.

Digital Library

[20]

[20]Batya Friedman and David Hendry. 2012. The Envisioning Cards: A Toolkit for Catalyzing Humanistic and Technical Imaginations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1145–1148.

Digital Library

[21]

Henrik Gedenryd. 1998. How designers work - making sense of authentic cognitive activities. Cognitive Science. Retrieved May 22, 2018 from http://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/how-designers-work–making-sense-of-authentic-cognitive-activities(d88efa51-c2f9-4551-a259-00bd36fe8d03).html

[22]

Colin M. Gray. 2016. “It's More of a Mindset Than a Method”: UX Practitioners’ Conception of Design Methods. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’16, ACM Press, Santa Clara, California, USA, 4044–4055.

Digital Library

[23]

Colin M. Gray. 2022. Languaging design methods. Design Studies 78, (January 2022), 101076.

[24]

Joy Paul Guilford, Paul R. Christensen, Philip R. Merrifield, and Robert C. Wilson. 1978. Alternate Uses: Manual of instructions and interpretations. Sheridan Psychological Services, Orange, CA.

[25]

Julian Hanna, Simone Ashby, Sónia Matos, Alexis Faria, and Ricardo Rodrigues. 2019. Dissent by design: a manifesto for CHI manifestos. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–10.

Digital Library

[26]

Kenya Hara. 2018. Designing Design (Reprint edition ed.). Lars Muller, Baden.

[27]

Linda Hirsch, Beat Rossmy, Florian Bemmann, and Andreas Butz. 2020. Affordances Based on Traces of Use in Urban Environments. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 729–742.

Digital Library

[28]

Kristina Höök and Jonas Löwgren. 2012. Strong concepts: Intermediate-level knowledge in interaction design research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 19, 3 (2012), 23.

Digital Library

[29]

Eva Hornecker. 2010. Creative Idea Exploration Within the Structure of a Guiding Framework: The Card Brainstorming Game. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’10), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 101–108.

Digital Library

[30]

Eva Hornecker and Jacob Buur. 2006. Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction: A Framework on Physical Space and Social Interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 437–446.

Digital Library

[31]

IDEO. 2003. IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design.

[32]

Tim Ingold. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological dialogues 14, 1 (2007), 1–16.

[33]

Majid Iqbal. 2018. Thinking in Services: Understanding and Exploring the Expanding Universe of Services (1 edition ed.). Bis Publishers, London.

[34]

Hiroshi Ishii. 2008. Tangible Bits: Beyond Pixels. In Proceedings of the 2Nd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI ’08), ACM, New York, NY, USA, xv–xxv.

Digital Library

[35]

Natasha Iskander. 2018. Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 18, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2018/09/design-thinking-is-fundamentally-conservative-and-preserves-the-status-quo

[36]

Ulla Johansson‐Sköldberg, Jill Woodilla, and Mehves Çetinkaya. 2013. Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures. Creativity and Innovation Management 22, 2 (May 2013), 121–146.

[37]

J. Christopher Jones. 1977. How my thoughts about design methods have changed during the years. Design methods and Theories 11, 1 (1977), 48–62.

[38]

John Chris Jones. 1992. Design Methods. John Wiley & Sons.

[39]

John Chris Jones and Denis G. Thornley. 1963. Conference on design methods. Papers presented at the Conference on Systematic and intuitive methods in Engineering industrial design, architecture and communications(London, sept. 1962). (1963).

[40]

Heekyoung Jung and Erik Stolterman. 2011. Material Probe: Exploring Materiality of Digital Artifacts. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’11), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 153–156.

Digital Library

[41]

Heekyoung Jung and Erik Stolterman. 2012. Digital Form and Materiality: Propositions for a New Approach to Interaction Design Research. In Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design (NordiCHI ’12), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 645–654.

Digital Library

[42]

Awais Hameed Khan. 2022. Material forms of participation: exploring the value of design by making design methods accessible to non-designers. PhD Thesis. Retrieved January 31, 2023 from https://doi.org/10.14264/2d156cb

[43]

Awais Hameed Khan, Scott Heiner, and Ben Matthews. 2019. Disconnect: A Proposal for Reclaiming Control in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–6.

Digital Library

[44]

Awais Hameed Khan and Ben Matthews. 2019. Democratizing Soap: The Methodological Value of Using Constructive Assemblies as a Participatory Design Tool. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, ACM, 155–164.

Digital Library

[45]

Awais Hameed Khan, Stephen Snow, Scott Heiner, Robert Hardgrove, Sarah Matthews, and Ben Matthews. 2020. The Politics of Materiality: Exploring Participatory Design Tools, Methods & Practices. In DRS2020 Synergy, Brisbane, Australia.

[46]

Awais Hameed Khan, Stephen Snow, and Ben Matthews. 2020. Tracing Design: Practitioner Accounts of Design Value, Documentation & Practices. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’20), Association for Computing Machinery, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2091–2105.

Digital Library

[47]

Jon Kolko. 2018. The Divisiveness of Design Thinking. Interactions 25, 3 (April 2018), 28–34.

Digital Library

[48]

Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman. 2007. Twenty-six moves suffice for Rubik's cube. In Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation - ISSAC ’07, ACM Press, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 235.

Digital Library

[49]

Jung-Joo Lee. 2012. Against method: the portability of method in human-centered design.

[50]

Jung-Joo Lee. 2014. The True Benefits of Designing Design Methods. Artifact 3, 2 (March 2014), 5.1-5.12.

[51]

Kevin Lefeuvre, Soeren Totzauer, Michael Storz, Albrecht Kurze, Andreas Bischof, and Arne Berger. 2018. Bricks, Blocks, Boxes, Cubes, and Dice: On the Role of Cubic Shapes for the Design of Tangible Interactive Devices. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’18), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 485–496.

Digital Library

[52]

Joanne Leong, Florian Perteneder, Hans-Christian Jetter, and Michael Haller. 2017. What a Life!: Building a Framework for Constructive Assemblies. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’17), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 57–66.

Digital Library

[53]

Annemarie Lesage, Hubert-David Au-Yeung, Simon Bourdeau, Béatrice C. Caron, and Pierre-Majorique Léger. 2019. Sketch or Play? LEGO® Stimulates Divergent Thinking for Non-sketchers in HCI Conceptual Ideation. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’19), Association for Computing Machinery, Glasgow, Scotland Uk, 1–6.

Digital Library

[54]

Szu-Yu (Cyn) Liu, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2019. Decomposition As Design: Co-Creating (with) Natureculture. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’19), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 605–614.

Digital Library

[55]

Dan Lockton, Devika Singh, Saloni Sabnis, Michelle Chou, Sarah Foley, and Alejandro Pantoja. 2019. New metaphors: A workshop method for generating ideas and reframing problems in design and beyond. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition. 319–332.

Digital Library

[56]

Jiahui Lu and Lehua Cheng. 2013. Perceiving and Interacting Affordances: A New Model of Human–Affordance Interactions. Integr. psych. behav. 47, 1 (March 2013), 142–155.

[57]

Andrés Lucero and Juha Arrasvuori. 2010. PLEX Cards: A Source of Inspiration when Designing for Playfulness. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Fun and Games (Fun and Games ’10), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 28–37.

Digital Library

[58]

Simone Orlowski, Ben Matthews, Niranjan Bidargaddi, Gabrielle Jones, Sharon Lawn, Anthony Venning, and Philippa Collin. 2016. Mental Health Technologies: Designing With Consumers. JMIR Human Factors 3, 1 (2016), e4.

[59]

M. Resnick, F. Martin, R. Sargent, and B. Silverman. 1996. Programmable bricks: Toys to think with. IBM Systems Journal; Armonk 35, 3,4 (1996), 443–452.

[60]

Horst WJ Rittel. 1973. The state of the art in design methods. Design Research and Methods 7, 2 (1973), 143–147.

[61]

Horst WJ Rittel and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences 4, 2 (1973), 155–169.

[62]

T. Rokicki, H. Kociemba, M. Davidson, and J. Dethridge. 2014. The Diameter of the Rubik's Cube Group Is Twenty. SIAM Rev. 56, 4 (January 2014), 645–670.

Digital Library

[63]

Wolff-Michael Roth. 1996. Art and Artifact of Children's Designing: A Situated Cognition Perspective. Journal of the Learning Sciences 5, 2 (April 1996), 129–166.

[64]

Peter G. Rowe. 1987. Design thinking. MIT press.

[65]

Robin Roy and James P. Warren. 2019. Card-based design tools: A review and analysis of 155 card decks for designers and designing. Design Studies 63, (July 2019), 125–154.

[66]

Rubiks.com. 2020. Our Heritage. Retrieved August 8, 2020 from https://www.rubiks.com/en-uk/about/

[67]

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders. 2000. Generative tools for co-designing. In Collaborative design. Springer, 3–12.

[68]

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, Eva Brandt, and Thomas Binder. 2010. A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design. ACM Press, 195.

Digital Library

[69]

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers. 2008. Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign 4, 1 (March 2008), 5–18.

[70]

Donald A. Schön. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic books.

[71]

Herbert A. Simon. 1968. The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT press.

Digital Library

[72]

Dorothé Smit, Martin Murer, Vincent van Rheden, Thomas Grah, and Manfred Tscheligi. 2017. The Evolution of a Scale Model as an Impromptu Design Tool. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’17), Association for Computing Machinery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 233–245.

Digital Library

[73]

Dorothé Smit, Doenja Oogjes, Bruna Goveia de Rocha, Ambra Trotto, Yeup Hur, and Caroline Hummels. 2016. Ideating in Skills: Developing Tools for Embodied Co-Design. In Proceedings of the TEI ’16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’16), Association for Computing Machinery, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 78–85.

Digital Library

[74]

Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional ecology,translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social studies of science 19, 3 (1989), 387–420.

[75]

Erik Stolterman. 2008. The nature of design practice and implications for interaction design research. International Journal of Design 2, 1 (2008).

[76]

Anne Sullivan and Emily K. Johnson. 2019. BeadED Adventures: Crafting STEM Learning. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’19), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 351–358.

Digital Library

[77]

Timothy Sun and Changxi Zheng. 2015. Computational Design of Twisty Joints and Puzzles. ACM Trans. Graph. 34, 4 (July 2015), 101:1-101:11.

Digital Library

[78]

Richard Wetzel, Tom Rodden, and Steve Benford. 2017. Developing Ideation Cards for Mixed Reality Game Design. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association 3, 2 (2017).

[79]

Mikael Wiberg. 2014. Methodology for materiality: interaction design research through a material lens. Pers Ubiquit Comput 18, 3 (March 2014), 625–636.

Digital Library

[80]

Mikael Wiberg, Jofish Kaye, and Peter Thomas. 2014. Material interactions. Pers Ubiquit Comput 18, 3 (March 2014), 573–576.

Digital Library

[81]

Oren Zuckerman, Saeed Arida, and Mitchel Resnick. 2005. Extending Tangible Interfaces for Education: Digital Montessori-inspired Manipulatives. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’05), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 859–868.

Digital Library

[82]

Speedcube. Xiaomi Giiker Super Cube i3S (Electronic Rubiks Cube - APP Remote via Bluetooth). Retrieved August 8, 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIBYXUlIjAM

Cited By

Ardianto Taepoer ROno KLuffiansyah Malasan PTriharini MAyu Puspita ASugandi YNurin B(2024)Sparking Dynamic Dialogue on Everyday Solutions through Solution Mapping CardsJurnal Desain Indonesia10.52265/jdi.v6i1.373(85-97)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.52265/jdi.v6i1.373

Index Terms

Participatory Design Tools: Leveraging Materiality and Familiarity to Adapt Unconventional Materials into Design Tools
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. Participatory design

Recommendations

Participatory Design Tools: Exploring the Value of Design through Materiality
CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

As participatory design (PD) approaches become a normative part of contemporary business practice, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that PD tools and methods are accessible and understandable to a larger audience, to fully mobilise and harness ...
The role of design fiction in participatory design processes
NordiCHI '18: Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Participatory design is in essence very malleable as any design technique could lend itself to it, as long as users and stakeholders are involved. Design fictions however, have more often been used as either a vehicle for critical designs, or as a sheer ...
Design anthropology in participatory design from ethnography to anthropological critique?
PDC '14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Industry Cases, Workshop Descriptions, Doctoral Consortium papers, and Keynote abstracts - Volume 2

In this workshop we explore the opportunities of ethnography and design anthropology in Participatory Design (PD) as an approach to design in an increasingly global and digital world. Traditionally, ethnography has been used in PD to research real-life ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

C&C '23: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Creativity and Cognition

June 2023

564 pages

ISBN:9798400701801

DOI:10.1145/3591196

Copyright � 2023 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 June 2023

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

C&C '23

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

C&C '23: Creativity and Cognition

June 19 - 21, 2023

Virtual Event, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 371 submissions, 29%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

1
Total Citations
View Citations
224
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)139
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)12

Reflects downloads up to 22 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ardianto Taepoer ROno KLuffiansyah Malasan PTriharini MAyu Puspita ASugandi YNurin B(2024)Sparking Dynamic Dialogue on Everyday Solutions through Solution Mapping CardsJurnal Desain Indonesia10.52265/jdi.v6i1.373(85-97)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.52265/jdi.v6i1.373

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents