Dialogue-Labs · Methods

Practitioners from different fields of research and design have understood the importance of involving diverse groups of users in the generation phase of novel artefacts, products and services, and thus facilitating participation has become one of the cornerstones of co-design. Underpinning this approach is the supposition that stakeholders, including users, can contribute productively through involvement in the design process since they bring privileged insights into the domain that designers are trying to address and the ways in which future products and services may fit into and affect that domain. This work addresses how stakeholders can be involved in the ideation, concept development and early prototyping phases of co-design.

The dialogue-labs and its three structuring elements (i.e., process, space and materials), provide a structured way of generating ideas through a sequence of co-design activities. The process provides a clear step-by-step procedure for a two-hour idea-generation session in which participants work in pairs. The space is carefully crafted to align content to different locations, inspire participants and encourage them to move around the room. Finally, the materials are the means for participants to build a design language of their own and to provide different entry points to the design problem.

Co-Design: Elderly Health Data

Displaying the information collected by mobile health technologies remains a challenge, especially when considering representation of health data for older adults, namely where and how to display data captured by health devices.

We propose a remote co-design approach based on dialogue-labs where older adults from the Global South can explore, imagine, and create new technologies and representations of health data through the presentation of personal objects. We conducted remote co-design sessions with 18 older adults from Chile and Ecuador.

Co-Design: Chasing Lions

Drones are an exciting emerging technology with a fast growing adoption in the global consumer market. Despite an increasing presence of drones in the African continent, there is a lack of research that incorporates African perspectives in the design and development of drones.

We brought together 15 sub-Saharan African community members to a co-design session based on dialogue-labs that discussed cultural aspects of human-drone interaction. Results highlight the importance of working directly with communities to inform the design of an emerging technology such as drones.

Co-Design: P(l)ay Attention!

In recent years, children’s mental health problems, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), have been a growing phenomenon. However, there are limited examples of designing for and with children with ADHD. This work views conditions such as ADHD through the lens of neurodiversity as different cognitive styles, focusing on “coolabilities” and enhanced competences instead of disabilities.

We explore how to engage and involve children with ADHD in co-design activities. Taking the Diversity for Design (D4D) framework as a starting point, we adaptated the framework for ADHD informed by theory, three expert interviews, and an empirical study consisting of three co-design workshops based on dialogue-labs with ADHD children.

Prototype: PickCells

Rigid touchscreens are the predominant medium for interactions with digital services. Their current fixed form factor narrows the scope for rich physical interactions by limiting interaction possibilities to a single, planar surface. However, in the future our touchscreens could be broken into pieces and put back together again.

PickCells consist of touchscreens that can be reconfigured in the shape that best suits a person's current activity. Through a series of co-design activities based on dialogue-labs, we synthesized a design space aimed at inspiring future research, giving researchers and designers a framework in which to explore modular screen interactions.

Design Space: Nearby Strangers

Designing interactive technology with an aim to encourage social interaction between nearby strangers is challenging. While there are various social norms, cultural practices and privacy concerns that hinder interaction with strangers, ignoring the other people can be even more detrimental in the long term (e.g., leading to a low sense of community and missed opportunities).

We explore the design space for playful interactions with nearby strangers during three co-design sessions based on dialogue-labs with 14 participants. We conceptualize and theorize this design space by analyzing 60 ideas produced in the co-design workshops.

Other Publications

Workshops