User Friendly Design

Nineteen-year-old Ethan airs his skateboard up onto a railing beside a set of concrete stairs. Precariously balanced, he slides the board down the railing, landing at the bottom with a smack. Practicing kickflips, he speeds off down the sidewalk, and then remembers to check his watch. It’s time to meet his buddies.

He heads over to a kiosk by the sidewalk and punches a few buttons. Five cameras have been shooting pictures of his tricks, combining them to make 3D images. He downloads the pictures to his personal Web space, and then heads off the “street” into a large atrium.

His friends are coming from various directions. Josh was in the practice facility, skating on the halfpipe.

Tom and Sarah were in the pro shop, looking at the latest BMX bikes and snowboards.

Mason was in the digital studio creating some new tunes for his MP3 player. Together, the friends head off to the main arena for the day’s big competition. As they take their seats, a voice booms over a loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to…The Realm.”

The Realm is a giant action park designed to showcase the Realm brand of products, services, and experiences. At least, it would be if it—or the product line—actually existed. Right now Realm remains in the realm of the imagination—that of four Arizona State University honor students. The students were asked to come up with a new brand appealing to the Digital Generation.

The assignment is part of an ASU design class sponsored by Thomson Multimedia, Inc. Thomson, a French conglomerate that owns RCA and GE Consumer Products, is positioning itself for the digital future. When people think of RCA, they think of television sets and phonographs, not interactive digital media. Thomson wants to change that image and appeal to a younger, more tech-savvy crowd. The company approached ASU for help.

The students propose new brands. But the project is not really about developing products, says Paul Rothstein, an assistant professor of industrial design and principal investigator in the Thomson project. The purpose is to examine methods for designing products that center around user needs.

“User-centered methodology for design, in a nutshell, stipulates that we design based on the needs, wants, and expectations of the user. Theoretically, there’s no problem, but practicing it gets sticky,” says Rothstein.

For example, a company may employ a product designer in Phoenix and a manufacturer in Taiwan for a product that is sold in China.

“What do they want and need in China? I have no clue,” says Rothstein.

User-centered design borrows field research techniques such as ethnography from social science fields. Social scientists go out and live among the people they study. They observe daily behavior in a natural setting.

Similarly, designers need to watch how people use products in real life. However, the business world cannot afford the extended time-frame for study.

“I call it ‘ethnography lite.’ It works because designers’ concerns are much more focused than those of ethnographers. Ethnographers often need to understand a whole culture. We generally don’t,” Rothstein says.

The students who invented the Realm concept, for example, observed 18 to 24 year olds involved in “X-games” sports like snowboarding and skateboarding. They watched how X-gamers acted, interacted, and used products. They also talked to them and learned about their preferences and perceptions.

This type of research is essential, says Rothstein, because globalization has increased the need to close the gap between the people who make products and the people who use them.

“In the old world, there was no problem because the makers and the users all lived in the same village,” he says. They understood each other’s needs and desires. Today, even within one country there are many demographic groups with varying needs.

In addition, customers today demand a high degree of customization. “Henry Ford could say, ‘You can have any color car as long as it’s black.’ That won’t work today,” says Rothstein.

Cell phones that allow users to change colors and patterns, and Web portals that display the news you want to read are examples of the move toward personalization.

ASU has one of the few programs in the country where scholars study this type of design process. To aid the process, Rothstein created DESiGNSPACE, a research and design lab housed in the School of Architecture.

The lab is a kind of home base for user-centered design research. DESiGNSPACE is a vehicle for activities such as developing research methods, designing user experiences, hosting workshops, and seeking external funding.

The Thomson grant funded the creation of two undergraduate classes. The students learn methods of user-centered design while. They also serve as a case-study that helps Rothstein augment and refine the methods even further. The classes are co-developed and co-taught by Rothstein and Melissa Niederhelman, an assistant professor of graphic design. James Hershauer from the College of Business serves as a course consultant.

Both classes mix upper-level honors students from business, industrial design, and graphic design. The students work together in teams on a realistic design project. Although such interdisciplinary teams are common in the workforce, they are still rare in academic settings.

“This was probably the first time most of these students ever worked together,” Rothstein says.

“This is the only class where I’ve had a chance to work with somebody from a different department,” agrees Patrick Dostal, an honors student in marketing. “It was rough. We had issues. People would say, ‘In my program we don’t do it this way.’”

For example, business students tended to concern themselves with timeliness and efficiency, while design students wanted to take the time to get the right look, Dostal says. Students from one discipline often held negative stereotypes about the others.

Despite the difficulties, he says, “It was worthwhile to learn this now. We all learned a lot from each other.”

Rothstein asks graduate students to videotape portions of the classes. The videos help him study the effect of user-centered design on the students, their creativity, and their ability to work in teams. As Rothstein develops new methods for user-centered design, he used them in the classroom as well. One new method is called a (x 4).

“It draws upon elements from ethnography, market research, and design,” he explains. The four As stand for: actors, activities, artifacts and atmosphere. “Basically, in design we need to look at the relationship between actors doing stuff and using things in specific locations. The a (x 4) method was developed to help do this.”

The method includes four main phases. In the first phase, “Facts and Observation,” designers observe their intended audience and collect facts in the form of notes, photos, and video.

The second phase is called “Snapshots.” It involves combining, organizing, and summarizing the facts into a coherent “picture” of the user’s life.

The third phase, “Visualization,” moves away from the typical design process. Normally at this point, designers jump right into designing products, Rothstein says. However, he recommends staying outside the specifics a little longer, in order to visualize how the four elements come together.

Finally, the researcher creates “Scenarios,” which can take the form of a storyboard, skit, or multimedia presentation. The scenarios are a “day in the life” story of the typical user.

Camilla Borell is one of the undergraduates putting this method to the test. Her team was assigned to develop a brand that appeals to “New Internationalists.”

“A new internationalist is an 18 to 24-year-old man or woman who spends a lot of time abroad. Usually they are students. They are eager to learn new languages and new cultures,” explains Borell, a native of Sweden.

“We will find a way for Thomson Multimedia to successfully target these people. We are developing a concept, not a specific product,” she says.

Using the a (x 4) method, Borell’s group conducted surveys and interviews with international students and alumni, observed their behavior (especially use of electronic devices), and looked at the available technology.

“Since ASU has students from 145 different countries, we thought campus was a pretty good target market,” she says.

Borell says it was a challenge to find out what people really want in an electronic device. You can’t just come out and ask, because often people aren’t conscious of how they actually use their belongings.

“You have to observe their habits,” she says.

Her group recommended that Thomson produce a Palm-Pilot-type device with subscription-based services. These services could include cell phone, e-mail, and Internet access. They also could offer travel-specific services such as language options; maps and directions; movie, museum, restaurant and club information; bus timetables, and flight schedules.

The group recommended setting up a pilot program for this network in one city. Thomson could approach the local government for funding assistance, because it would help draw tourists and business travelers. The city could rent out devices for the duration of a visitor’s stay, which would provide the city a revenue stream.

In addition, Thomson could form alliances with fashionable companies such as Nike, Oakley, or Donna Karan.

“For instance, you could buy a Nike bag that comes with its own PDA,” says Borell. It would be a way of introducing the new brand to the public—kind of like showing up at a party with the most popular kid.

Of course, the big revenue generator for Thomson would not be the sale of the PDA devices themselves as much as the subscription services that went with them. Users could pick and choose the services that best meet their needs.

The Realm action park was another option suggested to Thomson. Realm would provide electronics geared to this group, sponsor X-game athletes, and offer an action park complete with training, practice and competition facilities, including the “street scene” mentioned earlier.

These possibilities, and others, were presented in December 2001 to representatives from Thomson. Frank Grunwald and Dennis Erber are two former Thomson design executives who work regularly with Rothstein’s classes. They visited the classroom about once a month and served in a mentoring role.

“The experience was great. I think I learned as much if not more than the students did,” says Grunwald, who recently retired from his position as manager of global design and design research at Thomson.

“We in product development and design have always been interested in working with schools and bringing in what I refer to as ‘unpolluted’ or ‘uncorrupted’ thoughts—uncorrupted by the corporate culture. For that reason, we use young people who have not worked in a large corporation, who are not afraid of speaking out, of losing their jobs, or of being untraditional,” he explains.

While the students’ product ideas might make compelling options for Thomson, the class primarily offers a glimpse at how people working in multidisciplinary teams can develop more creative business and design solutions.

“I could have done it on my own, or with graduate students, but I decided to use undergraduate classes,” says Rothstein. In so doing, he has neatly integrated undergraduate education, faculty research, and corporate partnerships in a mutually beneficial way.

Student response to the classes has been overwhelming. Rothstein says he could only accommodate about one-third of the qualified, interested students.

“Students aren’t stupid. They understand that they need this experience. There’s a demand from the outside world and from students for these interdisciplinary classes.”

He adds that his assignments—such as “redesigning the shopping experience”—are deliberately vague and overwhelming.

“It’s an entirely unfair assignment, because it’s so huge. But it’s a challenge for them. Business throws out unfair assignments all the time,” he says.

And how do the students handle this pressure?

Rothstein just smiles. “They’re doing great!”—Diane Boudreau