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Creating Socionas

Building creative understanding of people and their social lives in new product development practice

From design research literature we learn that context comes in different flavors - e.g. ecological, personal, social, cultural, temporal -, and that we need to establish creative understanding of all (or at least some) of them in order to develop products that delight users. A flavor that intrigues me is 'the social'. In people studies, users often tell us stories about their experiences of product use in which the social plays an important role. And in daily life we see many cases of product use shaping the social, and vice versa. For example, the table arrangement in a restaurant influences how guests will interact during dinner and with whom, and when faced with buying wine in the supermarket, we often choose the bottle of wine from a nearly empty shelf, assuming it is the best one.
But what do design teams need to understand about 'the social' to develop products and services that are pleasurable and easy for people to use? And how can design teams build this understanding within the constraints of NPD practice?

In my Ph.D. project I develop a method and tools - socionas - that support design teams in building creative understanding of people and their social lives in NPD practice. The socionas are developed and evaluated in a variety of design projects at Philips Research and Philips Lighting. My cases involve conducting people research, and organizing and facilitating sessions in which user data is shared with design teams and developed into opportunities for design. Cases last from three weeks to six months.

The baby care project is an example of a case that I did at Philips Research in 2008. In this project a design team member and I participated in the role of people researcher. We gathered, structured and analyzed user data, and then developed preparation kits for communicating the data to the design team (figure, left). The design team members worked on the kits individually over several days. Then they participated in a joint insights session that we organized and facilitated (figure, center and right). The aim of this session was to build shared understanding of the parents and what caring for their babies means to them, and to identify opportunities for concept- and technology development.

sessionpostma:

contact

Carolien Postma
Landbergstraat 15
2628CE Delft
room: 10-2A-19
phone: 015-2783064
e-mail: C.E.Postma@tudelft.nl

 

links

www.socionas.com

www.contextmapping.com

Last update: Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 9:14:40 PM