This paper presents the concept of the "design collaboratorium" as a new usability practice designed in response to the "failing capabilities of classical usability methods to cope with ubiquitous technologies." Incorporating elements from participatory design, the design collaboratorium has at its core, a principle of cooperation among designers, usability professionals and users throughout the entire design process.
The paper presents some of the challenges and limitations of usability testing and rationale for the design collaboratorium.
To illustrate how the design collaboratorium process is carried out as well as to illustrate the benefits of this process, the authors present a case study of technology in a wastewater plant. The authors point out that traditional usability methods are inappropriate for this project as it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to reproduce the "use contexts" or actual use situations in a lab. In this project, the design team is comprised of process operators, lab technicians, electricians, and others from the wastewater plant as well as development engineers, marketing employees, usability specialists and others from the technology development company.
This representative mix of designers and users worked together in three teams in a design game, wherein participants used a game board and foam "game" pieces to reconstruct the processes of the treatment of wastewater. Next, improvements to the process were suggested. Each group then re-enacted their improvements in a movie-making adventure at the plant and presented the movies to the entire design team. The team also employed techniques such as "scenario acting" wherein participants acted out scenarios in the design space.
The authors point out that the benefit of this process is that design becomes a collaborative activity. While the design collaboratorium is not tied to any one activity or set of activities, it is based on a few grounding principles, including: the process must reflect the use context and environment; it should accumulate design knowledge over time and display that knowledge in a common meeting ground; and lastly, the techniques should inspire innovation.
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