Friends sharing opinions: Users become co-researchers to evaluate design concepts

Friends sharing opinions: Users become co-researchers to evaluate design concepts

Van Doorn, F.A.P.
Gielen, M.A.
Stappers, P.J.

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2013-08-26

The role of users in design is diversifying and increasing. Besides product evaluations and idea-generation sessions, users can collaborate in research that aims to find requirements for design by acting as researchers themselves. Earlier studies have addressed a variety of reasons why giving users the role of co-researcher makes sense: users have easier access to the target group (of which they are an active part), speak the same language or are a cost-efficient workforce. A previous study [2] explored the merits and constraints of using children as co-researchers in contextual user research, interviewing peers and family members. This current paper explores two follow-up questions: Can this method also be valuable for the evaluation of design concepts? What differs when other target groups than children become co-researchers? These questions are answered by describing a case in which children, elderly and students performed as co-researchers by interviewing their peers to evaluate design concepts. Comparing this case to the previous one reveals the differences in using co-researchers from different target groups and for different research purposes. We found out that the interfering factor of the co-researcher can have an enriching effect on the research findings.

co-researchers
research collaborators
concept evaluation
participatory design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:11a33173-b7f8-44ce-9f12-8632ebec8fb2

IASDR 2013: Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research "Consilience and Innovation in Design", Tokyo, Japan, 26-30 August 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) The authors