Some lessons learned, regarding prototyping and framing, from PD workshops
Bo Westerlund · 2008
This position paper discusses lessons learned from several cooperative design workshops that can be of importance when designing for co-design also in other settings. The workshops that are the foundation for the paper have been conducted with several different settings and participants: families, knowledge workers, people with different disabilities, elderly, etc.. Besides the ‘users ’ other stakeholders have also been actively participating. During the workshops the user-participants share recent experiences that they regard as meaningful. Thereafter all participants collaboratively generate ideas for improvements of the situations/activities. Since these ideas are triggered by someone’s particular experience the suggestions tend to be very specific and not too general or unarticulated. The ideas that are regarded as the best ones are presented as video prototypes, i.e. movies that show how the activities are performed with the help of lo-fi prototypes. The lessons learned include accounts for what helps the participants create meaningful ideas. A non-representational approach to the understanding of the collaborately created artifacts is also suggested. Basically the lessons are the importance to support the designerly ways of working as well as taking care when interpreting the prototypes.