Participatory product research

Exploring how design can be more accessible and equitable by putting ourselves in the shoes of people.

Context

This assignment is part of the courses "Inclusive Design" and "Participatory Design", part of the Master in Strategic Product and Service Design at the University of Mondragon.

Goals

Provide Orona with the weak points in the experience of lift use by older people.
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Define design guidelines that take into account all disabilities as a whole.

Participants

As all the participants are in their first year of the Master's, a level of confidence and a good atmosphere is assumed, which should be curbed if the group gets out of control. On the other hand, it is assumed that the participants have a wide knowledge of the tools of the design process and are receptive to the incorporation of new tools.

They are also familiar with concepts such as inclusivity or design for all, so the aim is to minimise the corresponding explanations so as not to saturate or bore the participants.

In principle, their involvement is expected if they are shown the session in an attractive and entertaining way. On the other hand, they are not the defined user so it will be necessary to contextualise and work on empathy in order to achieve an active and participative role during the session.

Tools applied in the session and their objectives

Phase 0: Start-up

-> Ice-breaker ‘you've got it drawn on’:

For the first hour of the morning, it is foreseen that the participants need to be activated so that they are just waking up without a high degree of involvement or excessively mobile actions that would lead to their rejection.

To do this, a game will be played in teams where the members will have to transmit the idea of a drawing shown using their teammates' backs as a canvas. Finally, the last member of each team will have to capture it on a panel comparing it with the original idea.

->Ice-breaker “¡Guess the film!”:

Once they have woken up, a dynamic will be proposed that will activate confidence and compenetrate the members of the teams that will make up the teams of the co-creation sessions. In this exercise, they will try to guess the film that the other groups represent.

To do this, each team will be given the opportunity to perform three scenes from three (known) films, and they will choose one to act out. It is a game without winners where the aim is that they lose their embarrassment, create affinity between the members of the group and arrive at the co-creation sessions active and eager to contribute ideas without prejudice.

Phase 1: Integration into the theme and working on empathy with the roles::

Ejercicio 1: Brainstorming with a visit to the lift:

In order to get in touch with the proposed topic, the cards of the different disabilities will be presented, arranged by groups and colours (see illustration 1), and they will be asked to raise the obstacles that they think the identified users have during the use of the lift.

For this purpose, they are provided with an A3 with the areas indicated for each type of disability (see illustration 2) where they will place the Post-It notes of the obstacles identified for each disability. The objective is to obtain a quantitative result that will help the members of the table to visualise the problems that older people may encounter when using the lift. To facilitate the task, they are accompanied to the lift with the disability sheet to facilitate and help them empathise with the situation. Due to the short time available for the session, the use of external elements, such as glasses that simulate visual disabilities, is rejected in order to speed up the session.

Exercise 2: Role assignment.

Once they have a general idea of what the use of the lift means for older people, they are assigned an extreme profile with a highly developed disability previously identified by colours in the previous exercise. In this way, once they have obtained a general idea, they take on the role and focus on a critical and personal way of judging and assessing. For this purpose, the cards are distributed randomly. The aim of this activity is that the classmates feel identified with a role, and do not have to worry about more than one, as it is considered very difficult to put themselves in the shoes of a person over 70 years old with several disabilities. In this way, participants are expected to empathise better, and focus their thoughts on a specific circumstance.

Exercise 3: Assessment of actions.

First, participants will be asked to collect all the ideas that have emerged in exercise 1 that directly influence their assigned rolo (by colour), and they will be allowed the possibility of incorporating any more if they see fit. Subsequently, they will be asked to place the Post-It notes they have collected in the previous exercise on A3 (see illustration 3) by level of non-inclusiveness. Finally, they will be asked to communicate to their classmates the criteria that each one of them has chosen so that the others become familiar with the criteria that their classmates have followed. From all the Post-Its, the four actions that are the most serious or negatively detrimental to the use of the lift will be selected.

Exercise 4: Inklugi.

This is a product exclusion meter devised and designed at the University of Mondragon. Colleagues are going to insert the four actions mentioned in the previous exercise that are the least inclusive during the use of the lift. The aim of this exercise is to use the Inklugi platform to consider individually whether there are indicators/measurers that they have not taken into account in the previous tasks, and thus obtain a more global vision that allows them to correctly assess their disability. In addition, the members of the session are shown a new method of assessment and visualisation of the design aspects that impact on the use of older people. The sections that make up the Inklugi platform coincide with the roles distributed in exercise 2 to facilitate its implementation and empathise the members with their disability. Two computers will be distributed to the six participants so that they are not distracted by the computer during the session.

Phase 2: Lift assessment

Exercise 5: Personal proposals
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Each member will be given a notebook that includes page by page all the elements that interact with the user during the experience of using the lift. Each role will have an evaluation table for each interaction element, and a section to freely express the improvements they want to make in each case.

Exercise 6: We are all jurors

The paper with a large photograph of the lift is placed in the middle of the table. The first person at the table is asked to place a Post-It note indicating the improvement he/she wants to adopt (and has described in the previous exercise) on top of the interaction element of the lift. The aim is that, having assimilated each one's role, in this activity they will defend their positions when they see that the improvements proposed by their colleagues have a negative influence on their use. In this way, the aim is to achieve a constructive discussion that will lead to redesign proposals that satisfy all the participants' points of view and are therefore inclusive for older people.

Session script

7:45 Classroom preparation.

->Opening and arrival to class
->Welcome

8:00 Sticker distribution and welcoming of participants

-> Put a moderator at the door with the stickers in an envelope.
-> As they enter, ask them to stand in a circle.
-> Welcome the participants.
-> Explain the type of session that is going to take place.

8:03 Ice-breaker “lo llevas dibujado”

Explanation of the Ice-breaker and its purpose.
Ask them to gather by sticker colours in teams.
Provide the drawing to each team.
Show the results obtained.

8:10 Ice-breaker “¡guess the film!”

Explanation of the Ice-breaker.
Show the titles of the films.
Check that the teams perform the dynamic together.

8:15 Exercise 1

Introduction of the topic and objective.
Explain what the exercise is intended to do.
Place the panel of profiles in the centre of the table and explain each role.
Place the A3 in the centre and brainstorm.
When they run out of ideas take them to the lift.
Incorporate new ideas that have arisen in the lift.

8:25 Exercise 2

Assignment of roles and explanation of what is expected of them based on the objective.
Show them the colour code they will have to follow during the session.

8:30 Exercise 3

Place the ideas from the brainstorming on the A3 panel according to colour or disability; each colour ranks the ideas from the previous exercise by personal criteria of inclusivity.

8:35 Exercise 4

Explanation of how the platform works and introduction of the purpose.
Introduce the four most outstanding actions from the previous exercise on the platform.
Choose the most restrictive evaluation criteria and complete in A3 of exercise 1 if you see it necessary.

8:45 Exercise 5
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Give the individual assessment booklet and explain how to fill it in if necessary.

9:00 Exercise 6

Place the A2 with the image of the lift and place Post-its of the redesign ideas that have emerged in the previous exercise with their corresponding justification or criteria in an established order. In order, when each person presents their proposals, let the other participants judge constructively if they do not agree.

9:10 Assessment of the session
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Give a choice between doing it orally (public) or through worksheets (private). Provide evaluation sheets of the session.
Proporcionar fichas de valoración de la sesión.

Pictures of the session

Results

Contact me if you want to know more about this project.

Evaluation

The results have been of high quality and with a high level of abstraction, among them, it is specified in detail how the lift buttons and screens have to be in order to fulfil the proposed objectives of inclusiveness that meet the needs of the elderly.

If the time had been better calculated and the previous exercise had been shortened (for example, by proposing that it be carried out in groups), more interesting results would have been obtained.

We have also detected the minimum requirements that the lift must have in emergency cases, and in this way, we have detected the design requirements that it must meet to satisfy the needs of the visually and hearing impaired.