Christmas is coming, and everyone is wondering what special gifts are in store for them! Christmas presents can be ever more special if you can create one yourself! The user-experience center hosted an “X’mas Design Thinking” event in December 2011 that allowed its participants to design a Christmas-themed APP on their on accord. The following demonstrates how we play with the concept of “Design Thinking”.
1. Let’s role play! The Designer & The Recipient
Role playing is a good way to create interaction and detect problems in an efficient manner. 2 two are paired together with one as the designer, and the other the recipient.
2. The designer listens – Finding necessities from daily life
Listening is not about figuring out the functionality, appearance or color of the product in hand. Designers must take away their own opinions and really listen to what the other has to say. Listening is always the most difficult part. It concerns asking the right questions, and coming up with the right solution in a limited period of time. Emphasize as much as you can! We held interviews on what the recipient is expecting with the principle of asking “Why”, and related to their usage of APPs as a reflection of a bigger user community. It is also important to take into consideration of the user’s personal habits etc.
3. The designer organizes – Filtering out the priorities
After a brief discussion, everyone had gathered vital information from various user experiences. Before proceeding, we spent a couple of minutes recollecting all the comments as a means to organize the ideas at hand. This step is crucial in order to focus on the primary needs and problems in order pinpoint which areas should be highlighted, and which can be by-passed.
4. The designer brainstorms – Coming up with the perfect solution
Design is not about the product more than it is about the person and the story. Here we arbitrarily came up with 43 proposals in hope of realizing more dreams and innovative opportunities.
5. Creating a prototype – Thinking with your “hands”
The prototype is not about being perfect, but to stimulate more ideas and creativity. Materials for the prototype can be anything currently available to you; (such as straws, cups, and post-its…) it cost almost nothing for the project members to finish their prototype structures. Another advantage is to be able to present your ideas in a more graphic and pragmatic way.
The Twilight Zone of the East and West – skype
Allows the user to celebrate Christmas through face-time; you can only greet a contact once each year and will consume a certain amount of mana.
Goodbye Lonely X’mas APP
Allows single users to locate other people who are spending Christmas alone and connect with each other.
Gama-fun music
Designed specifically for gamers. Download and play your favorite music score from any game that is featured only during Christmas. Allows users to listen to these favorites anywhere anytime.
X’mas tree card
Allows users that do not own an actual Christmas tree to decorate your own evergreen through this APP. Your designs can be posted or shared on various platforms for others view pleasure or comments.
beanfun! X’mas APP
Waiting for that one special gift? Why not send gifts through the beanfun! platform? Your presents will be distributed by drawing random lots; you are to decide which friends can join this event of gift-exchanging. As a conclusion, Design Thinking is not just an expertise for designers to create whatever they want. It is a notion applicable to each and every member (the projects, programmers, and planners) of the team as a way to always think creatively.
Reference:
1. [Book] Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms by Tim Brown
2. [Book] The World of Designing Secrets by C.F Wang, T.C Huang
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About the designer
Gamania User-Experience Center / T-T Yang
By methods of User-Centered Design, this model is aimed to execute or modify all corporative projects as to improve and promote Gamania in-house user-oriented products.
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