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

According to Wright and McCarthy (2008), there are two types of methods
that are the drivers for empathic sensibility in human-computer interaction
design: dialogue-based approach and narrative approach. The
main difference is that while the first engages designers and users for direct
dialogue, the latter may involve little or none direct contact between
the two. In general, empathic design requires some sort of dialogue between
the designer/design researcher and the user or stakeholder, as has
been mentioned earlier. In co-design, dialogue may easily be understood
only as face-to-face meetings between users, but in addition to that, there
can also be indirect user involvement guided through narratives or roleplaying.
Some of the methods used to organise different forms of dialogue
are reviewed here in an attempt to understand the ways in which they
elicit empathic responses. The aim is also to illustrate the type of knowledge
related to empathic user research.
What should be understood is that a designer or a researcher can be
user-oriented but still stay in the role of an observer. This is typical of usability
and ergonomic design, which does not provide means for role immersion
that is needed, in some degree, to reach empathic understanding
(Koskinen & Battarbee 2003). Role immersion does not mean to become
the other but “to make sense of the other through oneself ” (Wright & Mc-
Carthy 2008, p 641). The methods aiming at allowing the designers to see
the worlds of the others through their own eyes are ambiguous and openended
in order to invite subjective interpretations.
Probe is one of the approaches geared to gather subjective views on
people’s experiences and to organize dialogue between designers and users
(Gaver et al. 1999; Mattelmäki 2006). Probes are based on self-documentation
and often include open questions, diaries and photo assignments,
for gathering contextual insights, opinions, and stories and to envision
potential design ideas. According to Gaver et al. (2004, p 6), probes make
the strange familiar and the familiar strange, thus providing constrains
and openings for design. Probes combine observable facts and emotional
responses: firstly, from the users who reflect on their life through them
and, secondly, from the designers or researchers who initiate the study and
interpret the returned probe packages (Mattelmäki 2006, pp 61–62). Unlike
in cultural probes, in empathic probes the process is typically complemented
with interviews for gathering further details (ibid.).
Mattelmäki (ibid., p 58) proposes four main reasons for probing: inspiration,
information, participation, and dialogue. I am especially interested
in how probes may work as agents of dialogue in three ways: firstly, indirectly
through probes, in which designers give something from themselves
to the users, the filled probes in return telling something about the
users; secondly, where direct involvement during interviews “strengthen
their [designers] motivation to empathise the user perspective and apply it
to product design” (ibid., p 61); thirdly, probe study is typically interpreted
2.2
Dialoguebased
and
narrative
approaches
in
co–design
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