Open Innovation (OI) supports companies in systematically collaborating with external partners, offering various advantages. However, companies still face several challenges when applying OI, e.g., identifying relevant OI partners, collaboration methods, and project risks. Often, insufficient planning is the reason for subsequent deficits in OI projects. The analysis of relevant context factors ('situation') is important, which affect and constrain OI. To date, a general approach for analyzing (open) innovation situations or guidelines for developing one do not exist. Usually researchers develop their own situation analysis, including extensive literature reviews and experiencing similar challenges. This publication sets the basis for successfully planning OI projects. It focuses on developing an analysis approach for OI situations and supports other researchers in developing their own analysis approaches. The resultant objectives of the publication are to: (1) provide a list of potential situation analysis criteria; (2) provide a guideline for developing a situation analysis; (3) provide initial indications of relevant OI-specific situation criteria. The criteria were derived from the literature and qualitatively evaluated by three industry partners to assess their usability. Although this work is exploratory, and the results are not automatically generalizable, it is an important contribution for ensuring the success of OI, and for analyzing enablers and barriers to knowledge transfer from academia to industry.

Narratives are a tool used in many disciplines. In the area of User Experience Design (UXD), in particular, a storytelling approach can be applied during the whole design process to improve the quality of developed concepts regarding user experience (UX). Furthermore stories support designers in exploring and communicating their new concept ideas. However, the guidelines on how to create a story are either too abstract or do not focus on the experience elements of the interaction. This paper aims at systemizing the storytelling approach in the context of UXD in a ten-step-methodology for story creation. The proposed approach emphasizes on experience-related elements of interaction. The UX story is written by and aims at designers with the scope to communicate UX and reinforce it in product implementation. Further, the approach is systemized in a ten-steps-description with additional form sheets in order to support the application by designers from various backgrounds. In future projects a systematic evaluation of the tools introduced would validate the observed positive outcomes of applying storytelling in UX projects.

User Experience (UX) can be achieved by a user-related product's purpose (Macro UX) as well as by pleasant embodiment design in detail concerning material, usability and interface (Micro UX). Existing approaches mostly represent the Macro UX approach and therefore demand influencing the whole development process, in particular the early stage of goal setting. Furthermore, they are often psychology-driven. For that reason they are hardly implemented in industrial practice. We observe that most development projects are not triggered by user considerations but by market or technology influences. We show how to achieve an impact on the product's emotional quality and UX by supporting the design phase of those projects incrementally (Micro UX). Based on psychological foundation this approach provides pragmatic short-term support to designers in an adequate language to be applicable.

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