My research around the past couple of posts on participatory processes and the responses they have generated have helped focus my attention on an issue that has interested me for some time – the question of “User Needs”.
As the above video nicely represents, many of the early proponents or more successful marketers of ‘design thinking’ have often backhandedly justified the core value that ‘design thinking’ represents in terms of how it better fulfils ‘user needs’. Or at their most honest like in the video above (around 1min in), justified design thinking as the process of converting ‘needs’ to ‘demands’.
In reading and writing about Design, I can’t help but stumble across the term ‘user needs’, without ever finding a particularly compelling definition of what it is in any given context, let alone independent of context.
Having seen that horrible video above a few weeks ago and blown off a bit of steam on Wenovski about it at the time – I couldn’t help but be reminded of it when I read this rather cynical, but actually quite apt historical review of the term ‘user needs’ in a psychology paper today:
“A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force that organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation.” (Murray, 1938, pp. 123–124 in Deci and Ryan, 2000).
Aneed is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical
concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical
nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a
force that organizes perception, apperception,
intellection, conation and action in such a way as to
transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying
situation. (pp. 123–124).
As a designer who over the past few years has done quite a bit of rummaging around in psychology books and papers, perhaps with a view to fulfilling some of my own user needs and requirements!? The issue of ‘needs’ whether psychological or physiological is a term that again crops up quite a lot. I’ve long personally held the suspicion that the designerly version of “user needs” was somehow different from the social scientist’s. However, if Murray as cited above is to be believed the term may be used as indiscriminately and cynically in psychology circles as it seems in design circles.
I’m not for a minute disputing that user needs are a real and important driver of both the work of designers and psychologists alike. I wholeheartedly believe that there are designers out there who strive to cater for genuine user needs and requirements. But if so what are they? Do we have a consistent definition amongst us that isn’t just a justification for making things in a way that people will want to buy them?
Is the whole concept of user needs a smokescreen behind which designers just do whatever they want and take your money in the process?
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this so please either tweet them to me @fergusbisset or use the comments box below to let me know what you think. It’ll really help my Masters research into Motivational Design and judging by the video above it might even help our integrity as a community.
As I’ve mentioned a few times this blog is in part a platform from which to share my experiences and progress as I complete my MPhil in Design Research at Brunel University in West London. Things have been progressing well on that front recently. I’ve just completed a paper with Nicola Combe that’s been provisionally accepted for the UK Ergonomics Society Conference next year on improved visualisation of Ergonomic tools to support Inclusive Design. More on that in due course. In the meantime, and after a year of mostly reading, I’ve also begun the first phase of synthesising some of my research into Motivation and it’s role with design.
This first step sees me go back to elucidate some of the observations that lead to my interest in Motivation in the first place. I want to understand what motivates people’s behaviour in relation to their use of products, systems and services. I feel designers have a duty to better support individuals motivational capabilities. The first phase of beginning to synthesise and communicate this has seen me draft some early personas of motivated behaviour.
Hopefully you will recognise some of the attitudes and motivational states represented as well as levels of engagement that these personas are supposed to represent. As most designers are aware personas are a fantastic tool for visualising users and service stakeholders behaviour. I hope that this early draft will both help you all understand a bit more about what I am investigating as well as help you visualise how we as humans direct our focus and energies (our motivation) towards, people, products and services we interact with everyday.
Motivation Personas (click for larger version)
It builds on Self Determination (or Cognitive Evaluation) Theory (SDT) as proposed by Deci and Ryan. I’ve chosen this theory as it has strong links with Anders Ericsson and Herbert Simon’s theories of expert behaviour which I appreciate. Simply, these are theories that argue that expert behaviour is a product of Deliberate Practice. It’s this theory that has given rise to the “10,000 hour rule” which whilst controversial I like because it implies, much like SDT that anything is possible if you are prepared to deliberately work for it.
I will elaborate my justifications and hopefully explain more fully my own feelings about these theories in due course. But in the mean time I would really appreciate feedback on the personas – do you find this way of conceptualising motivation valuable?
- Is this a new insight to you or do you feel it’s old hat?
- Can you understand the document, in what way does it require further elaboration?
- Does the document and the role of motivation seem a valuable concept to you?
You can use the comments box at the bottom of the post or by clicking here. Or contact me directly. Thanks for your time in reading the post and I look forward to hearing from you.
Lauren’s Flickr photos also give you an insight into the week. Whilst thoughts on the week, particularly the conference on Monday, from one of the keynote presenters Nico Morelli can also be found here.
I’m going to elaborate some of my own thoughts from the presentations on Monday in subsequent posts, particularly the presentations of Arne and Marc and that of Renato Troncon on the role of aesthetics and philosophy in Service Design. However, in the rest of this post I want to share some pictures and a brief summary of the workshop I was participating in.
The workshop was run by Arne, Marc and Mikko Koivisto co-editor of the book Designing Services With Innovative Methods. Whilst the primary aim of the workshop was to empower attendees in their understanding and use of service design methods, the chosen context in which to do so was a local health care clinic in the town of Kuopio where the workshop was being held.
Patients at the Viretori Clinic
This clinic known as the Viretori, provides elderly people the opportunity to come and receive basic health care checks, administered by students at the University thus serving as a training and educational service for students as well as providing a medical one for elderly members of the community.
Educational and Healthcare Services All in a Oner!!
The identified problem was with a lack of engagement in services offered by the clinic to the elderly people of the town. This of course was having a knock on effect on the students education and motivation to participate in the initiative.
One of the exciting features of the workshop was the opportunity to explore Marc Stickdorn and his colleagues at MCI’s new mobile based tool for logging customer journeys. This Android based software allows you to log and rate touch points as you walk through the journey, then download them and catalogue them when you are back in the studio – really innovative and exciting stuff!
Using MCI's ServiceFellow Mobile Service Touchpoint Logging Software
It wasn’t all hi-tech though, with traditional methods and collaboration very much the point of the exercise. These were a great opportunity to get to know our Finnish hosts better as well as get to know the meriad of nationalities attending the conference courtesy of the Nokia Only Planet project.
Plotting User Journeys the old fashioned post-it note way!
The one and half day workshop culminated with the presentation of the group’s concept, which following interviews and observation of the users and service environment suggested empowering the elderly users with more ownership of the clinic, it’s presentation and activities. Our recommendations and reflections on the process were presented to all the conference participants on the final day and will also be put to the management of the clinic in the near future.
Presenting the Results (courtesy of Marc Stickdorn)
Altogether the week was an immensly enjoyable one, both for the networking opportunities it presented and new friends made, but also for the chance to explore service design within a hugely diverse group and learn from the results. Thanks again to all those involved.
Certified... (Again courtesy Marc Stickdorn)
I’ll be posting some further thoughts from the Kuopio experience in due course.
In response to my last post, Jonathan Baldwin asked the following question:
The idea of designers who are interested in the ideas rather than the finished artefact raises interesting pedagogical issues. How are they encouraged and rewarded in current educational environments?
His own thoughts can be seen in the comments page and ask some probing questions of the way that design is currently taught and communicated. My own answer to this question is central to my current MPhil research and indeed current day job. Thus I’ve reposted and rephrased some of what I wrote by way of response. Having had my annual review this week it fits in quite nicely with an update on some of my latest thinking. Any feedback, correction or diversions much appreciated!
As a designer who evolved to be a ‘design thinker’ as much as a ‘design doer’ largely as a result of my parallel life as a ski racer and professional (yes honestly, professional) ski instructor, the issue Jonathan highlights is one of big personal interest to me.
The problem occurs I think in that education seems rather quick to push or support people people into either ‘doer’ or ‘thinker’ camp. Doers, learn CAD and workshop skills, manufacturing processes and off they go resigning themselves to never seeing an end user again. I jest, but purely to make my point!
Holistic thinkers, in my experience undernourished in many ‘product’ or ‘graphic’ courses procrastinate in the face of unfulfilling practical assignments or labour and over intellectualise their more fulfilling graphic and research/ethonographic oriented projects.
Either way both hop from lily pad to lily pad of academic requirements without necessarily reflecting on why or whether their current task is serving some wider (social or personal) goal.
Frog Flickr-CC by Rainforest_Harley
Often sold the idea that coming to university will guarantee them employment (and worse) that they deserve such employment by default and based on their perceived rather than actual skills and skillsets, the education system generally doesn’t seem to be good at opening us up to genuine self reflection.
That is self-reflection that occurs as a result of thinking you are good enough to win a competition and then finding out that actually you are not. Education as I see it should expose students to these real and yes sometimes brutal challenges, guiding them not towards ‘explicit solutions’ but rather the tools and mindset to reflect upon and redesign their approach. It is certainly something that any junior designer will experience as soon as they start working in the real world, or particularly at present, trying to find employment in the real world. For more on the ‘dark side of design’ see this post.
The parallel here, is the professional athlete (or serious amateur) for whom life is one big systematic and seriously demanding long term process. A process punctuated by a series of competitions (or perhaps design briefs) in which they have the chance to evaluate their performance against a set of defined rules or criteria. If they are successful there might be some prize money, a car or a free trip to Madeira. If they are not they instead go away with valuable feedback on their performance.
Educators and Designers should (from my perspective and as I am currently outlining in my my masters studies) be the coaches in this analogy. Helping and supporting the learners and users to reflect and re-evaluate their behaviour against long term behavioural, ecological, social and basic needs fulfilment. Providing them with proven tools and methods and analysing and experimenting with new innovative methods where appropriate to incrementally push the boundaries.
If I wanted to employ someone, I wouldn’t want to see their portfolio so much as I would want to see their ‘training plan’ and performance objectives for the duration of their employment (or study) with me. At present this seems to be something that only happens at a post-graduate or in research based education in this and to my knowledge any other country.
Such a strategic, performance oriented view would in my opinion also help overcome the whole Black Swan / ego / genius design problem of assuming that an individual’s past success guarantees future performance. Instead, allowing individuals to stagger their satisfaction and intrinsic reward for their pursuits in a much more incremental and balanced manner.
Rybinsk 2007 Podium - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - www.teamtoday.org
My initial reaction can be seen in the comments section in that last link, for the most part I am a little disappointed at the near unamimous and public way this competition appears to have been rejected by those who otherwise do so much to promote and positively communicate Service Design here in the UK and around the world.
What is it about this competition I wonder, and it seems competitions in general, that these service designers are opposed to? And from my perspective how much might service designers be distancing themselves from huge numbers of the population and public they claim to represent should they reject such ideas?
Jeff Howard and Jonathan Baldwin impressively and compellingly argue in the comments of that last post that such competive structure does not support the co-design process that is such a fundamental part of service design. But another post yesterday from Joel Bailey got me thinking perhaps its a bit deeper than that. Perhaps the very people (whether male or female as Joel contends) who are attracted to Service Design and it’s processes are those that generally speaking might not relish the idea of a competition.
Carol Dweck(2000) talks about Entity and Incremental ‘implict theories’. In otherwords, two distinct ways in which people percieve the world. There are those that believe that knowledge (or design) are static or intellectual entities and constructs. These constructs can be communicated by linear processes and static hierarchical diagrams. These would be ‘Entity‘ oriented individuals, who to generalise, are those more likely to prefer dealing in physical entities. In the case of design this would be the more traditional graphic or product ‘physically’ oriented design approaches.
According to Dweck the other sort of individuals consider Knowledge (and design) to be more fluid and incrementally elaborated and constructed, more open to debate and interpretation. These individuals are more likely to be interested in the process of design than they are in the final outcomes or physical representations of the design process. This is perhaps because they understand that these physical entities are fleeting representations or put another way simply the tip of the iceberg in the design process. I know for a fact I fall into this category, although I still see and have personally experienced huge value from participating in competitions and dealing and manufacturing in physical entities and constructs.
I don’t know about you, but I know which category I would place service designers (and systems thinkers) in. The latter Incremental category and this leads me to another difference that Dweck highlights, the difference in how these two individuals approach to challenges.
According to Dweck Entity Theorists relish competition, whilst Incremental Theorists (Service Designers) prefer collaboration. Dweck in fact places these two on a sliding scale – indicating that by her perception the two ideals are polar opposites. Perhaps, there are also correlations between males and females as to which gender is more likely to fall in which category. Personally I don’t see gender based distinctions as valuable and find Dweck’s a far more useful categorisation of characteristics of those by my interpretation more likely to engage with Service Design and it’s methods.
How are you being competitive? - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - Teamtoday.org
The one concern however that this insight highlights, and it echos my reservations about Service Designers seemingly being so quick to dismiss this competition this week is, that whilst Service Designers might be Incremental Thinkers and theorists I would bet the vast majority of the population at least in the ‘old world’ are not. This would explain why so many of us participate in competitive sport and value physical objects. Thus, whilst Jeff would still maintain that the service design community should not support this competition. I would encourage the community to do so, as a chance to better understand and resolve the challenges involved and of which we are all aware in communicating Service Design to those with different (Explicit) ideals and perspectives. After all, is holistic and flexible thinking not truely the purpose of co-design and the value that service designers are capable of offering?
For this title I have to credit Fred Collopy who’s excellent article this serves as a response to or perhaps continuation of.
For those who haven’t been following, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere recently about the term ‘design thinking’ and it’s relationship with systems thinking.
[Just as] MIT [and] Harvard embrace Design Thinking…designers reject it. Wow. Is Design now too big for designers to handle? Do designers ” get” DT?
From the large number of service designers following this discussion and contributing to it, to name but a few Arne van Oosterom, Lucy Kimbell, Lauren Currie, Jonathan Baldwin my award for the best comment has to go to Lucy Kimbell:
“the problem with the phrase Design Thinking is the word design and the word thinking.”
More Intellectual Gymnastics courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr
I’m opening the following idea up for discussion, but I think what we are seeing as design’s Cartesian anxiety develops is a transition away from institutionalised definitions of design or it’s processes. A shift that exacerbates or only continues the long documented product-to-service shift that occured prior to the economic melt down. I’m willing to be wrong about this however and I certainly welcome comments or claims to the contrary.
Personally, I’m fascinated that in the same week as the Twittersphere alleged that IDEO (the original proponent of ‘design thinking’) had laid off half of it’s London office and open sourced it’s toolkits, we are seeing the cracks emerge or as Bruce ventures above, the outright rejection of institutionalised design practices. Maybe I’m getting carried away but it seems that even Harvard’s ever provocative Usman Haque was getting in on the act this week – denouncing the 20th century corporate mentality of ‘straight line thinking’.
To take Collopy’s argument a stage further, design is a process inseparable from action. In being inseparable from action, design as an activity becomes heavily influenced or equally inseparable from it’s environment or context of application. This is something that co-design activities and many service and participatory approaches to design appear to have recognised or at least responded to for some time.
However, if true this places us in the realm of design becoming an activity dependent on situated cognition a point I made indirectly in a previous post here and greater elaborated over the last month here and here. Designers becoming coaches or facilitators in design practice within a smaller, more limited and specialised context, as discussed here.
By further leaps and bound of intellectual gymnastics, and perhaps actual gymnastics if you take the whole mind-body thing too seriously, it’s not illogical to propose that the future of design education might in Haque’s ‘Capitalism 2.0 landscape’ come to rely on a more cognitive-apprenticeship approach of designer’s learning and practicing their craft just as traditional apprenticeships taught woodwork and mechanics.
Indeed in a week where there have been well articulated discussions about the large number of ‘surplus’ design graduates it is great to see Participle’s Loops Initiative and the fantastic Small Fish initiative (both via Redjotter). Design thinking might have died this week but as these two endeavours prove design is very much alive and designers can handle it very well thanks!
Steve Stott gives a polished presentation on how sketching can help deconceptualise complex systems, scenes or processes. An example from amongst many others of how design activity (sketching in this case) can blur the distinction between thinking and acting. As Fred Collopy and others have highlighted recently, there is growing disaffection amongst the design community with the idea that ‘design thinking’ is somehow seperable from the act of design itself. The themes addressed in Steve’s Pecha Kucha given at Made in Brunel 2009 can also be found in Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton.
Our ATTENTION to and RELEVANCE of a message, determine people’s perceptions of its VALUE whilst an individual’s CONFIDENCE will determine their expectancy for success and their perceptions of CONTROL and SATISFACTION.
Whilst the emotionally charged sharing of news and updates is critical for raising AWARENESS or generating ATTENTION amongst potential supporters, in order to induce motivated behaviour parallel strategies need to be introduced to support both those sending the messages and guiding the individuals responses towards a specific short or long term goal. In it’s simplest manifestation this could include feedback on the number of times a particular piece of news has been linked to / read / retweeted, thus through feedback, motivating users that their voice is being heard.
Indeed, this has had a more literal and physical manifestation in the recent Iranian situation as this haunting and beautiful video demonstrates:
Such feedback is hugely valuable in combatting feelings of frustration or at their most extreme a feeling of learned helplessness – which is to say the sentiment that “nothing I do is ever going to make a difference.” But in this situation this is not didactic feedback from ‘a system’ to the user. The system in question here both online and offline are ‘social’ and enable users themselves to feedback to, inform and support each other. As Arne Oosterom elegantly put it a week or so back:
@designthinkers: “service designers should provide people with tools to self-organize around a common interest.”
How far can we as designers design in features that combat learned helplessness? As Nick Marsh highlighted yesterday in reference to this article;
@choosenick: ”People don’t think like the state: “I don’t have ‘needs’, I have something to give.”
Again there are a number of strategies for designers addressing ‘learned helplessness’, something that might also be referred to as demotivated behaviour. How many of these can be wrapped up by changing your focus to design dialectic as opposed to didactic systems.
Amateurs versus Professionals? Something I considered here the other day.
Convene versus Control?
Shirky presents the changing media landscape in terms of the sliding scales above. How can we make best use of the media tools that we all have available?
The process behind this blog has always aimed to be one big post a week that framed a particular aspect of my research, followed by a series of smaller supporting or conflicting posts throughout the week. These smaller posts intending to encourage contribution and consensus by the end of the week and are intended to focus on real world or anecdotal application of that week’s research question. Thus far I’ve shared thoughts and observations from my research into Intrinsically Motivating Design and supported Skill Acquisition in the design of products and services. I’ve also volunteered some of the thinking from my experiences in designing for public engagement.
Ever been left frustrated by a system, product or service that didn't work the way you wanted it to? Photo from: Maryam Kh
This week I’m going to try and do it in more of an active problem solving sort of way, responding to the design brief of designing for democratic regime change. In other words, as a designer of systems, products and services what can I contribute from my research to enable and empower individuals striving to undermine an autocratic regime. Contentious – yes. Interesting – yes. Educational – yes.
Hopefully, if I do a good enough job, this will be a nice theoretical study into motivational design and to positively influencing human behaviour. Indeed, this exercise might provide an insight into understanding contrary behaviour, which is to say systems, products and services that aren’t designed to motivate or empower their users or might be actively implemented to demotivate and dis-empower them. My hope is that this exercise will provide a valuable and unique insight into better designing dynamic systems and services to better support the intentions and will of the majority of it’s users. I hope you will see this as something worth contributing to or at least broadcasting further afield, it is certainly not intended to be prescriptive and as far as it is published here is purely a theoretical discussion, although clearly influenced by powerful recent world events.
![More Intellectual Gymnastics [Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/2563351997_9b1f91701a.jpg "More Intellectual Gymnastics Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr")
