BEYOND USER CENTERED DESIGN CO-CREATIVE EMERGENT APPROACHES IN THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN DISCIPLINE

Kevin Shankwiler, IDSA / Claudia B. Rebola Georgia Institute of Technology [email protected] / [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION New understanding of people as users has forced the industrial design discipline to change. Since its origins, industrial design has traditionally attempted to design products for “most” - the target market where new opportunities are identified through market research. In this realm, the emphasis was on fabrication technologies that could produce products affordable for most users. More recently, however, there has been a shift in focus by applying universal design principles with the goal of creating products usable by more people. Universal design principles allowed designers to expand that focus and design for “more.” Currently, most industrial design institution curricula apply user-centered approaches, where universal design is the backbone. However, these methods are still not enough to allow designers to reach "all." In an attempt to accommodate demands of design for all, new methods have been injected into the design process. Linking the two aforementioned approaches advances a new business model in the design discipline.

This paper discusses a co-creative emergent approach in the industrial design discipline that allow an understanding of users as individuals and therefore deliver more targeted design solutions for “all”. Novel design methods are discussed including participatory design and parametric modeling linked with digital fabrication. The authors discuss the links and relationships between the methods and how they complement each other throughout the course of the design process. The significance of this paper is to advance a new model of delivering better-suited products and services to the user needs within the discipline. The more the user is engaged in the process, the more attachment to the product they have resulting in increased perceived value of the design. Overall, the methods discussed have relevance to the evolving nature of business by designing more valuable products.

1.1. OVERVIEW ID TRADITIONAL PRACTICE The practice of “industrial design” emerged during the early part of the twentieth century, as mass produced machine goods became attainable and desirable by the masses. Advances in mass manufacturing efficiencies, distribution of electricity and expansion of transportation infrastructure lowered the cost of goods and brought technology and convenience within reach of the household. Early application of industrial design was driven by a desire to produce and sell goods with style – in part a reaction to an American economy based solely on standardized mass production (Meikle, 1979). Design was heavily influenced by the glamour of technology and the promise of a better future through designed products. Design teams at the time were suggested to be comprised of “a designer, an engineer, a technical expert, a manufacturer, a merchandiser, and others with a knowledge of production planning and channels of distribution” (Woodham, 1997). The emphasis was given to mass-produce products than can be marketable to the majority of people (Bürdek, 2005; Flores, 1999).

Within this approach, designs were conceived by their creators and placed to the users hand. The relationship between designer-user was unidirectional, placing the user at the end of the spectrum in the receiving role. Much of the product concept generation was based on artistic views as well as experimentations with new material and processes. An example can includes a chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld (Conran & Bayley, 1985). The “Red and Blue” chair was designed in 1917 representing explorations guided by the De Stijl movement focused on building and strategically painting a chair to make it disappear or float in the environment. The chair is an outstanding piece of design yet it exemplifies the lack of end users playing a role in the design process.

Figure 1. Designer-User relationship evolution

The relationship between designer and the user is shown in fig. 1. In the first instance, as described above, the designer had little interaction with the user until the delivery phase when the product was purchased.

1.2. EVOLUTION OF USERS IN DESIGN Henry (Dreyfuss, 2003) was one of the first designers to start focusing on the user. The “Hoover” vacuum cleaner project showcases the designer’s interest in looking at needs from users’ perspectives. Such needs included understanding what housewives needed from the products (i.e. to be light to carry). Dreyfuss also expanded his work with the work on “Joe and Josephine”, positioning the designer as the founder of modern industrial design and of human factors (Tilley & Associates, 2002). Joe and Josephine helped designers understand fundamental differences between men and women users, and to design for their unique needs.

The aforementioned project and the designer’s focus exemplify how the user started to shift its role towards being inspirational for product design. From this point, the user starts to have a more involved role in the design process. More of this approach can be seen on the work of (Papanek, 1985) focused on meeting the basic needs of struggling population by design. He states that the only important thing about design is how it relates to people.

The more the user was incorporated in the design process, the more additional disciplines were integrated with industrial design. Disciplines from the cognitive sciences, psychology, physiology and even social sciences were instrumental in developing a new concept referred to as “user-centered design.” User-centered design formalized the role of the user in design, as designs were determined by the specific needs both physical and cognitive, as well as the wants and limitations of the user. From this standpoint, industrial design was populated with different research approaches to better involve the user and make informed decisions in product characteristics (Laurel, 2003; Martin & Hanington, 2012). Today’s designers are offered a myriad of methods such as context mapping, survey questionnaires, behavioral mapping and participatory design to mention a few.

The second and last rows of fig. 1 further illustrate this evolution of users in the design process, showing the growing relationship between designer and user and exchange of information during the initial research, middle development and final delivery stages.

1.3. CO-CREATION Co-creation is a new term that has emerged in the design discipline describing the active role users plays in the design process. Frameworks have emerged to articulate the necessary approach to decide which design methods, tools and techniques to use in a specific project.(Elizabeth B. N. Sanders, Brandt, & Binder, 2010). Sanders et all proposes a framework describing methods for deciding how to probe, prime, understand and induce creativity from users though a variety of tools. The methods are also articulated for users to express their attitudes and opinions under three areas, ”what they say, what they do and what they make.”

New generative tools have also emerged to harness creativity from the users (Martin & Hanington, 2012; E. B. N. Sanders & William, 2001). Users can be approached in terms of what they “say” by telling their thoughts about particular things through methods such as interviews. They can also “do” or express their opinions by acting, engaging and playing through observational or scenario based design techniques. Lastly, users can “make” tangible things through collages or “Velcro” toolkits. This last category differentiates from the others, as users become more active participants in the design process, co-designing products with professionals.

The overall message from this new co-creative approach is that to drive truly human-centered product design, it requires harnessing creativity of ordinary users through the right variety and type of tools. Fig. 2 illustrates the increased integration of users in the first two phases of design due to co-creation practices (row four).

Figure 2. User centered Designer-User relationship

1.4. UNIVERSAL DESIGN IMPLICATIONS One of the most significant advances in design related to understanding users has been documented within a universal design approach. Universal Design (UD) claims that design should not be accessible for just a few people. Neither should a product should be designed for groups sharing specific characteristics. Rather, products should be designed to satisfy the need of most people without stigmatizing users. Universal Design, as such, is defined as the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design (The Center for Universal Design, 1997). The authors, a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, collaborated to establish seven principles that may be used to evaluate existing designs, guide the design process and educate both designers and consumers about the characteristics of more usable products and environments.

The principles have been influential for designing better products and widely adopted when designing accessible products. Numerous examples and guiding principles have been approached (Lidwell, Holden, & Butler, 2003). Lidwell et all presents a large number of principle examples around answering the question, “how can design be better perceived?” The emphasis is given on meeting individual needs without stigmatizing the users in their relationship with the products. Even though this approach has been instrumental to design better products for most people, there are still unanswered questions related to how to design for all people.

Consider the case of assistive technology (AT), in which while functionally addresses a highly specific user need, the resulting products are all too often not contextually appropriate (does not fit with the user’s desired lifestyle). Visual design aesthetics are not considered and the resulting product is stigmatizing - it draws attention to and enhances the user’s sense of disability. This leads to many people not being fully engaged members of society. Additionally, studies have shown there to be a fairly high rate of abandonment of these devices – approximately one-third on average. User involvement is encouraged in device selection and development, as users inherently know what works for them. Phillips found that easily procured devices are not always the most appropriate. In order to fight abandonment of AT devices, it is necessary to emphasize consumer involvement in design and consider their long-term needs (Phillips and Zhao, 1993). Additionally, studies found that adoption rates improved by empowering individuals to create and modify their own assistive devices, rather than being forced to rely on off-the-shelf products (Hurst and Tobias, 2011). This study showed it is possible to custom-build solutions preferable to off-the-shelf products and that users have interest in being involved in the process.

Through co-creation methods and universal design principles, our understanding of users in the design process has evolved to where we now know them as individuals.

2. EMERGENT USER NEEDS As previous progress towards greater inclusiveness in design has been achieved, the design discipline has not reached the era of designing products for use by all users. To do this, a new approach is needed. Existing methods aim to aggregate all (greatly varying) needs of wide swaths of user populations into a single, inclusive product. This method requires heavy investment in up-front user research and data gathering that is both time-

consuming and expensive. As a result, true useful and inclusive products are outside the project scope of many consumer goods manufacturers. Additionally, many tradeoffs are often made in the design process (Nieusma, 2004) leading to diminished universality in the products.

The issue lies with the attempt at making the final manufactured good embody ALL aspects of inclusivity and universality. This is impractical. A better approach is proposed by taking a mass customized approach. Mass customization (MC) allows providers of products to deliver customized or tailored goods at or near mass manufacturing costs and production efficiencies. What sets MC apart from UD is that the tailoring of product to the users’ needs is done in a pre-production context, ie digitally. Users’ needs are captured as parameters or logic- based constraints in a digital model of the end product. From that logic model, many variations of the good can be created, each one tailored to the specific user or user populations’ needs.

Figure 3. Industrial Design practice tailored to individual needs across time.

In this paradigm, there is less of a need for design teams to attempt to embed all possible universality into one manufactured product (often leading to ineffective compromises), but rather designers build the universal design principles into the digital model, which is then tailored by the end user or an agent acting on the user’s behalf. Products are produced meeting the identified needs and with less design compromise and greater benefit to users taking this approach.

Fig. 4 illustrates the challenges faced by designers when implementing wide ranges of user needs into a single product. The design program begins with a brief, or question. Potential users (U) are contacted, data is gathered, and then translated into design criteria (D) based upon each user’s preferences and needs. Through a thorough design development phase, a final product is designed. For fairly small and/or homogenous user groups, this is adequate. When incorporating more and more users and their varying preferences (U 0 – Un+ ), the ability of any single product to adequately meet those expanding design criteria (D 0 - Dn+ ) becomes less and less.

Figure 4.

2.1. PARAMETRIC MODELING AND DIGITAL FABRICATION Parametric design is a design enabler of mass customization - a design approach built upon the principles of modeling by parameters and embedded logic. This is demonstrated by mid and high-end CAD (computer aided design) software, such as SolidWorks or Pro-Engineer. Traditionally, manufactured products are described by a set of engineering drawings and material specifications. These might be written documents and/or CAD drawings, but they contain no inherent intelligence. If the dimensions or material requirements change, the CAD representation must be redrawn. This CAD information is used by the manufacturer to order material, set up equipment, cut parts, etc. Parametric models, however, are CAD representations with additional layers of intelligence built in. Key dimensions and other aspects of the represented object (e.g., the number of screws or the location of a handle) are tied to external databases or to other control dimensions through parametric

equations. For example, if the width of a given object, such as a tabletop increases, the thickness may automatically increase incrementally with the table width for structure – this according to some established mathematical relationship. Additionally, another layer of intelligence can be added to the parametric model by relating performance data, such as material property data and stress analysis relationships to the thickness of the dimensional characteristics of the model. In this way, knowledge is embedded in the digital model (Cavieres, Gentry, & Al-haddad, 2011).

This performance data may also be linked to human abilities, as links between product features and user requirements can be made. Attributes of the features are parameterized, using labels rather than fixed numeric dimensions. Parameters can describe and direct the presence or absence of features and allows for instancing of features and permutation of design.

On the production side, parametric modeling is commonly integrated with computer-driven (CNC) fabrication processes and with newer additive manufacturing methods. The intelligence contained within the parametric model can easily drive manufacturing scenarios. These CNC-based technologies enable the ability to rapidly generate prototypes for visualization and for testing of design attributes that are not well understood quantitatively. Coupled with flexible manufacturing processes, parametric modeling enables firms to economically produce many variations of a given design, as opposed to the volume-based approach of producing many copies of a single design.

This points to the relevance of using parametric modeling as a basis for design of inclusive goods. Through co- creation methods of observation, experiments and interviews, relationships between the capabilities of a population of individuals and the features and geometry of products needed to accommodate them are developed. These relationships are coded into the parametric model, so that changes in the population (i.e., changes in ability) and the appurtenances necessary to accommodate them, are immediately reflected in the parametric representation of the product. This reflection is also realized real-time in manufacturing instructions. This allows the production of multiple versions of a product, each tailored to specific design criteria – varying user needs. As shown in fig. 5, a parametric design approach allows individual criteria to be maintained through to final product in the form of tailored variations (DU 0 – DU n+ ). Therefore, the needs of each individual user are successfully met in the fabricated product.

Figure 5. Parametric design model

3. BEYOND A USER CENTERED DESIGN APPROACH As was previously discussed, Industrial Design has evolved from a very segregated, designer-controlled process to one of higher user-control with integration between designers and users. In a highly integrated process, users are responsible for significant design decisions. Designers become facilitators and are responsible for understanding the large range of user requirements and prescribing the parameters (boundaries) within which the users create. Consequently, user engagement in the design process has grown from front-end investigation (interviews, surveys, observation) to include middle-process prototype testing and evaluation to end-stage feedback and continuous improvement. This further evolves to where the front and middle processes merge into a continuous participatory design and development program. Feedback loops are maintained even after final product has been delivered to the users.

Figure 6. Integrated User-Designer relationship.

The final evolution, as illustrated in fig. 6, goes beyond user-centered design and acknowledges the potential users as diverse and unique individuals. So too, is the design team a diverse and distributed group. As such, the users do not expect a single product created to encompass the needs of all, but rather, multiple variations of the product tailored to fit their own specific needs.

In this scheme, the user is not only a consumer of the product, but becomes the final designer of the product. As delivered by the designer, the final product is not the actual fabricated good, but rather the digital model encoded with intelligence for the user to interact with and create. Within this approach, the user has a new role in the design process. Users are involved at initial phases as well as later phases of the process. As such, it can be said that with the new tools available to designers, the design process begins with the user and ends with the user. Designers empower users by design not only involving them in co-creative process, but also becoming vehicles of design letting users finalize the design to satisfied individual needs.

The significance of this approach is relevant as more and more consumer goods require that the fundamental relationship between user and product become even simpler and usable. User involvement in the design process can potentially create value. If value is achieved, then it can be said that the design can generate attachment. Hence, a better attachment signifies a better relationship with product-user interactions by design.

4. CONCLUSION This paper discusses a co-creative emergent approach in the industrial design discipline. The argument relies on the issue that current design practices results in great design for most but not all. Therefore, delivering more targeted design solutions for “all” through a better understanding of users as individuals and is needed. A discussion on the history of user involvement in the design process has been explained. Also, current methods and technologies in the Industrial Design discipline including co-design, parametric modeling were described. These methods and technologies allow for the user to be a more active participant in the design process. Linking these methods and technologies within current practices results in a new approach to design for all. With this approach available to designers, the design process begins with the user and ends with the user. Designers empower users through the design process by not only involving them in co-creative process, but also allowing them to become vehicles of design. As such, letting the users finalize the design to satisfied individual needs.

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