Challenges and Merits of Co-Design of Mobile Concepts

Challenges and Merits of Co-Design of Mobile Concepts

Challenges and merits of co-design of mobile concepts
Jenny de Boer
TNO ICT
Eemsgolaan 3
9727DW Groningen
+31622393756
Jenny.deBoer@tno.nl

ABSTRACT
In co-design (lead) users, as well as designers, programmers and other stakeholders become part of the design team. Although the process of co-design is not yet fully detailed, we propose an iterative process of individual as well as group activities. The contribution of each expert (e.g. designer, user) depends on the stage of the development process and will determine the group dynamics. We have encountered problems in our process, due to the fact we did not involve a problem-owner from the start of the project, which made the scope too wide and open and therefore time consuming.

Categories and Subject Descriptors
H5.2 User-centered design, Evaluation/methodology

General Terms
Design, Human Factors

Keywords
User participation, participatory design, mobile application development, user generated content, user experience, fuzzy front end, co-design, co-creation, lead users, location based storytelling

INTRODUCTION

The role of a user in a development process has changed from being an informer into a co-creator [9]. We agree with Liz Sanders that it is necessary to design and innovate with people and not just for them [3]. Next to that, ordinary users can help in generating valuable and sensible ideas that are often more original than the ones from developers [4, 8]. These ingredients make us believe in the value of co-design. However, literature does not yet point out how a co-design process should be applied within a team of end-users, designers, programmers and the client.

Co-design differs from participatory design and Human Centered Design because it involves all the relevant stakeholders as active participants in the process throughout the entire process [2, 11] and not only the end-user. In order to find out how co-design should be applied in a non-research environment we have used...