Database Reference
In-Depth Information
cess.
Communication design
,theintentionalcreationofartifactsthatcommunicatethedata,
ation design is built into this part of Contextual Design, the bridge from data to design ac-
tion. Communication design has its own set of principles that make it work; we'll illustrate
them below.
The graphical models of Contextual Design are designed to help people internalize the
worldoftheirusers.DesignteamshavealwaysbeenabletowalktheAffinityDiagramand
use Sequence models to drive design. But some of the other models in Contextual Design,
like the Flow model, are more difficult to build and use. So when we set out to design new
models like the Day-in-the-Life Model, which represents how devices, place, and time are
used in life, we took a step back to re-think howwe present this complex data sothat it can
be consumed by teams easily. The new Contextual Design models described below have
been created and iterated to ensure that they work well as a bridge to design.
Along with the models, we use a facilitated workshop to guide the team through using
the data for generating new product concepts. These workshops create another immersion
experience for the team. Interviews and interpretation sessions immersed researchers (and
helpers) in the lives of users; now the rest of the product team needs to be immersed in the
data as well. When the team does a
Wall Walk
of the consolidated data they steep them-
selves in the world of the user. Then with this knowledge the
Visioning Session
leads a
team through group storytelling that embodies new product concepts. Together, they form
a reliable bridge to design that has stood the test of time.
WiththeintroductionoftheCoolConceptswehaveaddedasecondworkshop,the
Cool
Drilldown
. In these four days the team further refines the initial product concepts using
the design principles associated with each Cool Concept. As with the Visioning session, in
the Cool Drilldown each sub-team goes back to the user data before pushing the product
concept further based on cool principles.
Since both workshops continuously use and reuse the consolidated data, the team prac-
tices making the bridge from data to design and internalizes the data as they do so. Our
work with teams has shown that these three steps are extremely effective in producing an
initial set of market-relevant, transformative product concepts which can then be defined
and validated in more detail.
Below we describe the consolidation process and show examples of model communica-
tion. Then we describe the steps of ideation used in Contextual Design.
4.1 DATA CONSOLIDATION
Products serve whole markets, but we can only find out about users by talking to them one
on one. Consolidation is the step that brings the data from all users to-gether into a single,
