I have read “Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning” which is an article written by Elizabeth Sanders and Pieter Stappers, and “Contextmapping: experiences from practice” by Froukje Visser, and Pieter Stappers. Below are the summaries and critiques based on each article.
Summary of “Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning”
The article discusses about codesigning, and the methodologies that designers and non designers utilize to have an insight on what to design for the future. According to the the authors, designers create probe packages so that participants can create their own interpretation of the research questions by responding to ambiguous questions, a toolkit is presented to participants so that they can use the toolkits to express themselves, and codesigners create and evaluate prototypes in iterative cycles.
The commonality of these three methodologies is that they all focus on the act of making. The role of making in the process of designing is becoming increasingly important. It emphasizes that making is now adopted as a medium by designer and non-designers working together so that they can receive visual clues on how to proceed with their design project.
Probes, toolkits, and prototypes are variants of making. The differences between probes, toolkits, and prototypes are illustrated below.
Probes: “Probes are materials that have been designed to provoke or elicit response. For example, a postcard without a message.”
Toolkits: “Toolkits (made up of a variety of components) are specifically confirmed for each project/domain. People use the toolkit components to make artefacts about or for the future.”
Prototypes: “Prototypes are physical manifestations of ideas or concepts. They range from rough (giving the overall idea only) to finished (resembling the actual end result).”
Critique on “Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning”
After reading the article, I learned the difference between probes, toolkits, and prototypes. I believe that the three concepts are similar in the sense that they provide the designers with a visual ingredient to further work on to create the end product. I believe that probes, toolkits, and prototypes are like a stage that designers and nondesigners go through. Creating probes and collecting the responses from distributing the probes would act would help designers and non designers gather inspiration. I believe that inspiration comes to the mind when people are exposed to an environment to freely express their opinion without having strict boundaries; probes beautifully fit that standard. I think that toolkits allow designers and non designers to receive a more comprehensive response from individuals as they are “specifically confirmed” for a specific project or domain. I think that a toolkit would be useful after accumulating enough inspiration on what specific project or domain that the codesigners would like to focus on. Let but not least, rapid prototyping would be essential in visualizing what the end product would look like. Prototyping is important because it helps codesigners discover issues that would have not been discovered otherwise since it is easy to spot places to improve on when the idea is presented visually. I have learned from my past internship experience that this is applied to the business arena under the name of “scrum.” The “scrum” methodology encourages employees of a company that are participating in a project to create a rough prototype at the end of each “sprint,” which usually refers to the duration of one or two weeks, so that people can have a sense of what the end product would look like and make improvements to the project in a more rapid way. This is comparable to the traditional “waterfall” methodology; this refers to employees of a project presenting an end product at the end of a three or four month stint. This was deemed to be inefficient as it would take up too much resources if the top management found an issue with the product as it would take months to modify the product that took up months to build. Hence, I believe that this sort of making that embraces the benefits of visualizing the imagination of people would work great for future endeavors in efficiently creating effective design.
Summary of “Contextmapping: experiences from practice”
It is essential that designers have the information about the contexts of users’ interactions with products in order to design products that integrate well with the lives of the users. According to the article, the innovation base of human-centered design is a combination of the information about the company, skills of the design team, and the contexts of the usage of the product.
It is regarded as a form of Participatory Design as context mapping heavily relies on the participation of the users to understand the contexts of the product use. According to article, Participatory Design refers to the process of users and other stakeholders participating in the design process to ensure that the resulting designs fit the way people will actually use the product in their own lives.”
The authors mention that there is a lack of resources on how to conduct practices to receive data for context mapping whereas there are many publications on why context mapping is important for designing.
Context is defined as “the environment of human-computer interaction.” This is a rough definition as context is the shared notion of the product based on time and space; it refers to aspects that are outside of the product. Context is different than an experience because an experience refers to a subjective event that is solely under the ownership of the person that holds the experience.
The process of context mapping includes a sequence of research steps that refer to preparation, sensitizing participants, group sessions, analysis, and communication. In the preparation stage, designers and researchers prepare for the context mapping, in the sensitizing stage, probe packages are made to elicit responses, and during the group sessions, participants come together to share their experiences; these data are analyzed and then communicated within the research team so such information can be transferred into valuable resources for the design research.
Critique of “Contextmapping: experiences from practice”
I believe that the context of designed products nowadays are becoming more important as products, especially products related to technology, are used by users in an emotional way. Users engage with multiple mobile applications and tech devices for the experience more than utility. Experience design is a hot keyword because corporations acknowledge that user retention can be secured when users feel that they have a seamless experience when it comes to transitioning from their context to immersing into the experience of the product. There are relatively fewer guidelines on how to proceed with context mapping because I believe that humanity has only recently been able to indulge in the luxury of trying of pondering on the issue of how we interact with technology. According to scholars, technology is not a new concept that has emerged with the advent of the 21st century; rather, humanity has used technology in multifarious forms since the early prehistoric ages as even a stone used to cut plants can be referred to as technology. Nonetheless, technology that refers to the usage of computers have allowed people to reflect on themselves and their experiences with technology like no other generation. I highly believe that we should focus on the context of how to utilize technology as technology in the status quo is rapidly evolving itself to the point that it is actively interacting with us compared to the passive technology that we have used in the past.
I would like to tend my summary & critique by adding my favorite image from the readings.
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