Participatory design
a way to make a design better
Instruction
The content of this research is about the design concept of the design brand just use, how to practice, how to operate it, also discusses and summarizes the current design phenomenon. The design is a very complex and delicate, also be divided into many kinds. There is an old saying in China; there is always someone to learn from this area. This sentence was thought of when I felt the limitations in my design process. In the process of design, a mature designer needs to rely on a lot of aspects and experiences to think and explore from different angles; the quality depends on the designers themselves. But no matter how diversified thinking, the design always can be considered more if it is made by one person. This why there are so many unsatisfactory or confused designs in life and makes user-confusing or bad user experience. At the beginning of the project, I was more focused on thinking about how to work from a graphic designer and Think how to improve from a user's perspective I thought about the importance of teamwork, and then I came into a participatory design.
Recent research suggests that designers create more innovative concepts and ideas when working within a co-design environment with others than they do when creating ideas on their own (Mitchell.2015). Participatory design is an approach to the design strategy that brings customers into the heart of the design process. Also known as “co-creation”, “co-design”, or “cooperative design”. they compass techniques useful to both initial discovery and subsequent ideation phases of a project, where the end-users of a product, service, or experience take an active role in co-designing solutions for themselves. At the same time, participatory Design exercises are used in a variety of fields, such as software and product design, urban design, architecture, graphic design and even medicine (Ux passion 2015).
The design is a process of working together; At the same time, it is also a people-oriented behaviour. Before I started, I conducted a questionnaire survey and found that the design is still quite attractive for some people, but the user's subjective consciousness still not strong, and sometimes the user can't explain it in a few words or a few time talk, what can attract users, and make them are willing to spend time and effort to express their complete experience, insights into design process. It is easy to connect with another question, how to attract professional designers or Design practitioners are committed to this project.
From a long-term developed perspective, design needs, so just use this platform also needs to cooperate. How to present the scene of this problem? I think video can be a great way which better than only immobile design, while paper documents are more solemn, but most importantly, based on the Internet and social media, or people who come into or contact with it unconsciously, to understand the concept and purpose. This is also a focus area of our thinking. And everything is based on the brand's connotation, which is the basic of shared design.
With the development of the Internet, the emergence of social media, information is becoming more transparent, and more and more people are participating in network activities. At the same time, it gives more opportunities to people who are inaccessible because of distance and lack of information. This is also an opportunity for more people to understand the meaning of our brand on the Internet.
Participatory design as a research method for just use cases
Some things are hard to come by when conducting user research. People's needs, feelings and motivation may be hidden under a layer of courtesy, or people may not even know some of them themselves. This is how we turn to participatory practice to find ways to discover and talk about things that they could not fully understand before.
Participatory design is also an opportunity and a challenge. It is an opportunity for users to reach out to the real and complete design process. At the same time, the designer's expertise is also challenged by new ideas and as a member of the interest chain. There some people will pay attention to the design cost and the part of the commercial interest, which is also a challenge to coordinate the entire design process. The wider participation brings a wider range of ideas and possible, like the important role in the design process. , they share tasks and responsibilities, promote and improve the development of the project.
To attract users, we first need a clear selection of the user's target group, then communicate the information, let them know the concept of the design they are browsing or participating in, design the content, participate in the benefits that can be given to them or the society. Then it will be a specific problem and case background, storytelling, and infectious slogans enable more people to truly feel the information that the thing itself wants to convey. At the same time, users can have many new gains in the process.
In this era of the Internet, it is necessary to be good at using social media for brand promotion, to increase the exposure of the brand, and to the familiarity of the browsing users to the brand, and to put the core data into the title, because the title is seen before people watch the website. A guide section, as a sign of the invitation, the title should provide key information about the digital product so that the user can scan it in an instant. The wonderfulness of the title also determines whether the user will enter the viewing, and the brand is highly visualized. It is important to create visual identifiability and style of the product. Based on the analysis of the target audience, the brand plays a vital role in product promotion, because most people's visual experience is very fast and easy, much easier than reading the text, and more than hearing acceptance. It's much easier. Moreover, if the brand is well established, it will increase the trust of users when they see a website or application. So, I also created webpages and apps for just use, as well as visual guides for the site, posters and cards for the event, making it easy for users to navigate to important information. At the same time, a series of case Illustrations also play a role in attracting users in the promotion, while the paper design card also shows a sense of formality.
In many cases, a picture is worth a thousand words. In network and mobile user interfaces, it often works in this way: images and video become highly supported and effectively set up emotions or convey information. Also, the image and video present part of the content, which is both informative and emotionally appealing. illustrations, prominent protagonists, and fascinating photos can appeal to multiple targets.
For designers, the brand should effectively present the core benefits or projects to the designer, as well as technical support, project prospects, and practical planning, and focus on the designer's highlights and preferences, the most for the designer. What is important is the diversity of thinking, the diversity of perspectives, and the growth and improvement of professional skills. Therefore, we need to pay attention to and fully respect the independent consciousness of the designer. Through professional classification work, the designer can fully express his ideas in the design process, can achieve self-realization, and of course, there is also a return on money. After all, this It is their career that they make a living. Create a design atmosphere that designers like and are used to thinking and working in this atmosphere.
If there is a lack of resources in general and there is a lack of technical planning, this makes everything else difficult. Resources can be users, designers, marketing, etc., which will affect them.
In the design process, observing the user's thinking process and listening to their understanding of things, you can only learn a lot of things that have been ignored or not taken seriously. So in the collaborative design, we invite users to enter the creative process and listen to them, we can avoid making mistakes. But just listening is not enough. The best way is to let the user directly join the design process. In the design process, let the participants show us what is important to them, instead of telling us that we will be in the process. Get more specific and honest data. At the same time, you can get richer and more detailed information, and users can usually generate many good ideas in a short time, which can help designers and the entire design team to view problems or scenes in different ways. What is most unacceptable to users is that designers often try to design for themselves rather than design for users, which leads to many problems in the use of the product.
From the perspective of design psychology, the user’s direct needs and feedback can be used to create a knowing process and route for product development.
There are a lot of advantages to help designers or the whole project, but at the same time there are corresponding shortcomings, some can be improved, and some are related to it. For example, The collaborative design requires more participants. More participants often represent the opinions of different people and their interests. There may be very big differences and conflicts. At this time, it is necessary to pay attention to who is in the hands of the design process, whether it is user-led or Designers lead, or enterprises, manufacturers to lead, different forms, will bring different results, manufacturers pay more attention to the interests of goods and sales, designers care about the design of the product, stylized, and users More concerned about the actual use experience of the product, if one of the collaborative design is too strong and too dominant in the design process, this will undoubtedly weaken the enthusiasm of other participating members, although the participants bring a lot of creative ideas, but how Coordinating the relationships between the participants, or guiding their views to complement and influence each other, A very complex process. And providing too many options will reduce the decision-making and thinking process of the participants, making people feel that the design process is slow and still has an impact on work efficiency.
If you adopt a design-led design team, it may be difficult to balance all aspects of people-oriented design. When the design team and customer interaction is often limited to the early stages of the design process, similar questionnaires or interviews, and post-assessment phase, but the idea of constructing and operating procedures - only the responsibility of the internal team (usually by the designers). In this case, it is possible to miss out on some of the most valuable and customer-focused solutions. The immediate result associated with integrating co-design into existing frameworks is that “researchers and practitioners have seen that co-creation of early-stage implementations in the early stages of the design development process can have positive, long-term consequences (Sanders. 2008).
Understanding user habits and usage feelings and using feedback, how to directly solve the problems they face will often give new ideas to their experience. This new information can better inform designers about how to concentrate and focus on where. The ideas presented by the user can provide a workable inspiration for the solution created. Whether designed for consumers, employees, service providers or other audiences, they should listen carefully to their voices and invite them to join.
If the user-oriented design team is sometimes too focused on the user's design experience, and some innovative thinking is missing, and the user does not have a professional design background, some designs cannot be manufactured at the current state of the art or Mass production, the user's pursuit is a lot, even different users have different needs for the same product, it is easy to have difference.
How to start implementation, pay attention to the implementation
The process of value and value creation is rapidly shifting from a product- and business-centric perspective to personalized consumer experience. Informed, online, capable and active consumers are increasingly associated with companies. Create value together (Prahalad. 2004). Try to understand and use the user's language to talk to them, and communication with users offline or offline plays a crucial role. Not only can the design be effectively carried out, but also the directional visual presentation is significant for the dissemination and development of the project. Avoid confusion and leave the user away from the website or application. User research will effectively solve this problem and see how users want to communicate. At the same time, the introduction of copywriting is also a place that cannot be ignored. The same meaning can be conveyed through many different expressions, and it is different for people. A feeling of. In participatory design, participants (putative, potential or future) are invited to cooperate with designers, researchers and developers during an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem and to focus ideas for a solution, and during development, they help evaluate proposed solutions (Trischler.2018).
First, give participants a clear direction, establish the relationship between participants and design behavior, start with a single participant, communicate and practice, and also use the existing network with some well-known trusted designers or Design teamwork, looking for partners, or some charismatic organization leaders to influence more people, in the initial research phase of the project, especially in the stage of finding quality users to join, don't say things become too serious, This will give many users a feeling of being unconfident, so that their enthusiasm for participation will be smaller, and the process will be as interesting and attractive as possible. Then, let the design information be understood on the network or the street, abstract or figurative.
At the same time, feedback is very important. We are allowing users to ask design problems on the network or face to face and what they think of solutions. to maintain this connection with users, we need to think and reply to the information feedback from users. At the same time, it provides supporting technical support for excellent solutions that have the possibility of realization, giving users enough respect and sincerity. regarding distributed participatory design,
YouTube and their content creators, or YouTubers, they combine many of these elements into their website designs and planning. Video pages contain a 'share' function button that allows for individuals to share a link to a video through various social media sites like Facebook or Instagram to increase exposure and possibly redirect people to other sites content creators use for circulating media and for receiving feedback. Additionally, comments and ratings were showed by response can appear in the form of Each video has separate comment sections for users to leave input and ideas in. There are also a rating system of thumbs up/thumbs down in YouTube, to provide the content creators with a statistic on how well a video was received. Many popular YouTubers use social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, to declare new video and any information on external projects. Through managing social networks, website, apps, and YouTube channel, the content creators can manage the distributed participation effectively and maintain their fanbases as well as update them on any changes in the design or content creation process. In the design process, we also need to join third parties who do not participate in the design, do not participate in the design, so that, the subjective consciousness will be reduced, they are more objective and critical thinking of each participant's ideas and ideas and think They ask questions. If the design process has already begun, encourage members to try different ideas in the early stage, but in the medium term, avoid abstract dialogue, conceptualization and detailing to ensure the smooth progress and completion of the project. Encourage members to practice fully, get feedback and improve in practice, rather than always talking and not doing it. In the case of a unified solution, our swimwear is the main direction of development, rather than unifying all the details. Nowadays, we also need to take care of the needs of individual users, which also bring more possibilities to the design. For each participant, the part they are good at should be fully utilized to arrange the appropriate tasks.
As time goes by, the progress of the project progresses, and participants improved more the project. It may be technical and may be thinking. Develop their skills and knowledge of the surrounding issues and provide them with opportunities to strengthen them. After the project is over, they will take this information away and spread it to more people, making more people interested in joining the next project.
In course of the project, it is necessary to carry out continuous inspections. It is best to leave the participation, to examine the project from the perspective of outsiders, and to ask yourself whether the project is effective and whether the problem of concern is solved. Will it be used? If in the previous research, the project's needs and interests are based on real findings rather than assumptions, there will be a higher chance of getting the desired results.
In the design process, the company only provides a space for the design team to use to get the solution, instead of providing a solution. The collaborative design should provide a convenient way for the users to enter the design process and encourage users to provide creativity or practicality. Or critical programs and guide them into turning their plans into their actions, which can greatly increase the participants’ sense of responsibility for the project.。
Collaborative design focuses on their strengths rather than weaknesses by leveraging each person's different areas of expertise, knowledge and resources. When users realize that they can provide positive things for the design process, we can build a more confident and flexible design team. At the same time, it provides opportunities for people to meet and work together under a shared vision. This builds new social capital and strengthens existing networks. When people know each other better, they tend to be more tolerant, trustier, and able to collectively change.
At the same time just use as a brand, but also to assume the corresponding social obligations, I said that we want to do it as a public welfare project, our existence is to promote the sustainable development of society, the purpose is to make life better, share Design knowledge and skills, and create more job opportunities, which will attract many people who are willing to contribute to society. At this time, there is no target group, because everyone may want to make changes, contribute to society and become a kind of self-identity identity, whether it is users or designers.
Many local governments require community consultation in any major changes to the built environment. Community involvement in the planning process is almost a standard requirement in most strategic changes. Community involvement in local decision making creates a sense of empowerment. The City of Melbourne Swanston Street redevelopment project received over 5000 responses from the public allowing them to participate in the design process by commenting on seven different design options (2009).
In my project, my theoretical research and practice are combined. In course of a large project, I fully realized that my thinking divergence ability and the technical level of design are very limited. During the video shooting process. In the middle, I found that different people sometimes have very different ideas when they shoot videos, but they can't distinguish the level. In life, we often have some interesting and creative ideas, but these ideas are in most moments. It is fleeting and too idealistic. In the follow-up development of the brand, I think it is necessary to start from the following points. The first is the audience of the questionnaire. The survey here mainly focuses on students, so the results can only represent This part of the group, and from the feedback on the questionnaire, the answers are relatively simple and not detailed. In the next stage, I think that a good questionnaire needs to further improve the investigation, and at the same time take to the streets to communicate face-to-face with users. In the choice of case, I think that in the initial stage, we can try to carry out research and design from relatively small projects, and gradually accumulate experience, technology, and brand awareness for the next step of development, and with more professional designers. Work with design companies.
Conclusion
After researching the participatory design, it is not difficult to find that shared design requires a lot of preparation. It is interesting to note that when we pay attention to this point, we need many different fields of talent to deal with the areas they are good at. Like different close part, in general, this design method is a trend, great and huge experiences be brought to the designers, also improve the skills of majority users and make them real Participate in the design and enjoy the fun of design. Of course, to some extent, it is a challenge to the designer.
Designer-led or user-led, they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Designer is undoubtedly having great advantages regarding professionalism knowledge and skill. The negative is that this advantage depends largely on the subjective judgment of the designer. The user's dominant advantage lies in the experience from long time using; negative part is too idealistic thinking sometimes. They all affect other members of the interest chain. So how to implement it, this needs to be decided according to the specific project.
Reference
1. Ux passion. (2015). Participatory Design: What is it, and what makes it so great? Retrieved from https://www.uxpassion.com/blog/participatory-design-what-makes-it-great/.
2. Prahalad, C.k.; Ramaswamy, Venkat (1 June 2004). "Co‐creating unique value with customers". Strategy & Leadership. 32 (3): 4–9. doi:10.1108/10878570410699249 – via emeraldinsight.com
3. Sanders, E. B. N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. Codesign, 4(1), 5-18.
4.Mitchell, Val; Ross, Tracy; Sims, Ruth; Parker, Christopher J. (2015). "Empirical investigation of the impact of using co-design methods when generating proposals for sustainable travel solutions". CoDesign. 12 (4): 205–220. doi:10.1080/15710882.2015.1091894
5.Trischler, Jakob, Simon J. Pervan, Stephen J. Kelly and Don R. Scott (2018), "The value of codesign: The effect of customer involvement in service design teams", Journal of Service Research, 21(1): 75-100.
6 The City of Melbourne "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2008-10-17. Have Your Say May 14, 2009