Many companies are facing the task for radical innovations—totally new concepts and ideas for products and services, which are successful at the market. One major factor for success is a positive user experience. Thus, design teams need, and are challenged to integrate, an experience-centered perspective in their human-centered design processes. To support this, we propose adjusted versions of the well-established user research methods focus groups and cultural probes, in order to tailor them to the specific needs and focus of experience-based design, especially in the context of solving “wicked design problems”. The results are experience focus groups and experience probes, which augment the traditional methods with new structuring, materials, and tasks based on the three principles experience focus, creative visualization, and systematic guidance. We introduce and describe a two step-approach for applying these methods, as well as a case study that was conducted in cooperation with a company that illustrates how the methods can be applied to enable an experience-centered perspective on the topic of “families and digital life”. The case study demonstrates how the methods address the three principles they are based on. Post-study interviews with representatives of the company revealed valuable insights about their usefulness for practical user experience design.
RESUMELes services sur lesquels nous travaillons sont de plus en plus complexes et exigent un fort niveau de simplicité. Dans les projets R&D, l'ergonome intervient souvent, au début lors de la phase de conception, et après les développements pour valider le service par un test utilisateurs. La méthode que nous avons mise en place est une solution de mutuelle intégration de l'ergonomie et des développements agiles. Elle est basée sur la réalisation de test-utilisateurs courts qui permettent d'impliquer les utilisateurs en phase de développement. L'ergonome réalise ces tests en cycles coordonnés avec ceux du développement agile. Les résultats obtenus à chaque fin de cycles proposent des ajustements ergonomiques au même titre que les validations techniques peuvent impliquer des ajustements fonctionnels.Cette méthode a été appliquée et validée dans un projet. Suite à la description de la méthode, l'article présente les retours d'expérience des membres du projet. ABSTRACTServices on which we are working are more and more complex and require a high level of simplicity. In R&D projects, an ergonomist often acts at the beginning of the project, during the design phase. Or he acts after the development phase by applying a user test to validate the service. The method that we have set up is a solution to integrate user-centered design and the agile developments to one another. It is based on short user tests which enable users to intervene during the development phase. The ergonomist realises user tests in cycles that match agile development ones. Results gained at the end of a cycle suggest ergonomics adjustements for the same reasons that technical validations can induce fonctionnal adjustments.This method was applied and validated on a project. Following the description of the method, this paper introduces project members experience feedbacks.
À partir d’une étude qualitative menée par entretiens auprès de jeunes âgés de 10 à 19 ans et de leurs parents, l’article montre dans quelle mesure l’argent de poche est un outil de socialisation économique familiale, ainsi qu’un moyen d’accéder à la culture adolescente. Il met également en évidence les formes de marquage social et les significations sociales spécifiques associées à l’argent de poche. Des dépenses deviennent envisageables, d’autres paraissent illégitimes, non pas seulement en fonction de la quantité d’argent disponible, mais aussi en raison du fait qu’il s’agit d’« argent de poche ».
Adopting a need-based approach can help companies to create products and services that are preferred by their customers and improve their well-being, thus providing a competitive advantage. To put need-based designs into practice, it would be interesting to know how innovative product and service ideas can address the needs of a specific target group in a specific business domain. This paper presents an approach for (a) identifying such target group-specific need sets based on an online survey and (b) integrating them into the company’s innovation processes as part of a Need-based Creativity Workshop. To illustrate and validate this approach, we present a case study that investigates varying need subsets for two different user groups of future banking products and services in France: adults with and without families. Our study shows that a different set of needs is important for each group and reflects upon the benefits and challenges of a target group-specific, need-based design approach to leverage a company’s potential for innovation.
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