Meeting facilitation tool for designers, to help with evaluation and reflection of projects

Abstract

Goal The original goal of the project was to find a way in which a captured design process can hold added value to the designer, and to design a tool in which this can be made possible. Current ways of documenting design processes are too much of a burden. The project has led to a design proposal of a tool for design teams, to facilitate meetings. During the meeting, important decisions are documented in a way that is intuitive for the designer. By doing this, the tool can help designers to evaluate their project better on the long term. Literature study The goal of the literature study was to explore the scope of the project. From this study, it was found that documenting in a tool should not be burden for a designer. To make the process of documenting more appealing, benefits on the short term should be provided. Also, it was found that the context of the captured information should be clear. User research Two rounds of user research were executed. To begin with, user interviews were held with designers to find situations in which a captured design process could be useful. These situations were found in three topics: evaluation and reflection, being new in a project or a team and the reuse of information from past projects. These three topics were explored more in a participatory workshop. From the workshop, I choose the topic of evaluation and reflection to continue with. Information about decisions, motivations and consequences was needed for this. Choice for meetings Two fairly broad concepts were evaluated with designers. In this evaluation, it became clear that I had to choose a more specific focus to continue with. This focus was found in meetings. An important reason for this choice was that meetings provide a natural moment to document important decisions. Also, being able to run an efficient meeting is a short term benefit for the designer. Meetings are also an opportunity to add context to the decisions. Design Using user scenarios and an iterative process of sketching, a design proposal was created in wireframes. This design proposal is a tool that can be used in different stages of a meeting. It is used prior to a meeting, to plan the meeting and prepare the attendees by showing the agenda and the work to discuss. During the meeting, the results are documented and immediately structured. The meeting minutes provide a way to document the meeting in an intuitive way. After the meeting, the tool is used to read back the results, what has been decided, and what everybody has to do. Also, new work can be added afterwards for others to give feedback on. The tool uses elements which are linked in a hierarchy. Projects contain meetings, which contain agenda items. Conclusions can be added to these agenda items, and tasks can be added to the conclusions. By connecting everything, it makes it easier to determine what the motivations were behind certain meeting results. On the long term, these connections can help with project evaluation, because they show what was decided (in conclusions), and what was done (in tasks). Evaluation In a user test, the design proposal was tested with designers, using a paper prototype. Participants were rather positive about the concept, and thought it would be useful in their own context. They liked the fact that it was the results are stored in a central point. Some negative points were also discovered, like in the way the results are added. Furthermore, to use the tool effectively for evaluation, it should be integrated with a planning, or provide a way to show the results on a timeline of a certain period.