Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure Kirsikka Vaajakallio

By considering users’ creative input as an important source of design
ideas, the focus of user-centred design has shifted towards more creative
approaches which do not consider users purely from the objective
point of view but seek to understand people’s subjective values, attitudes
and desires as well. In this search, empathic understanding of
other people’s experiences has been considered central. “If we want to
make sense of how products enter our minds in reflective terms, we need
to understand how people themselves experience them. We need empathic
understanding of the user (Koskinen & Battarbee 2003, p 45).” As Fulton
Suri (2003, p 52) states, empathic design aims at “achieving greater
awareness, an extended imagination and sensitivity to another person’s
world in a powerfully memorable way”.
According to Battarbee, empathy is more an attitude than a strict set of
methods (2003, p 108), and the aims of empathic design, as described by
Mattelmäki (2003, p 119), are to seek design opportunities rather than solutions
for recognized problems. Hence design empathy is not only about
facts but inspiration as well (ibid., pp 119–120). In line with that, Gaver et
al. (2004) underline the need for designers’ and researchers’ subjective
interpretations, in which users are seen in relation to researchers’ own
experiences in “understanding their [users] responses empathetically, not
intellectually (ibid., p 5)”. I am sympathetic to their claim that, in our efforts
of better understand those people we are designing for, we should
recognise the limits of that knowledge. That in mind, Gaver and his colleagues
purposefully conducted user studies that provided fragmented,
incomplete and confusing results, to prevent designers and researchers
“from arriving comfortable conclusions (ibid., p 5)” about users’ lives.
I agree with the perspectives given above regarding empathic design
and support Mattelmäki’s (2006) claim that, to reach an empathic understanding
of a user’s experiences, there is a need for creative methods that
are open to designers’ interpretations. As a result, creative and collaborative
approaches such as probes (Gaver et al. 1999; Mattelmäki 2006), Make
Tools (Sanders & Dandavate 1999), design games (Ehn & Sjögren 1991; Johansson
2005; Brandt & Messeter 2004), and other so-called innovative
methods (Hanington 2003), have emerged to augment the understanding
gained by the traditional means. As pointed out by Keinonen (2009), the
aim of the innovative methods is often to speculate with future designs
rather than aim at reliable and valid explanations of the existing ones.
Therefore they suit particularly well for early design process, often referred
to as concept design or fuzzy-front-end, to direct design decisions;
to inform what actually should be designed, and for whom.
According to Keinonen and Takala (2006, pp 19–28), there are several
purposes for concept design including: 1) product development, 2) innovations,
3) shared vision, 4) building a competence, and 5) expectation management.
Although their examples are often from product development
2.1.1
Seeking
empathic
under–
standing
of
other
people’s
experiences
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