Week 7 Reading Responses

Universal methods of design

Business Origami

Summary: Business Origami allows stakeholders to collaborate by using tangible paper objects to explore how people, artifacts and the environment interact and show the value exchange.

Takeaway: It’s important to do this method with a multidisciplinary team and relatively early in the process.

Elito Method

Summary: Elito method allows for a team to synthesize their research into a design direction by using a spreadsheet and going through observation, judgment, value, concept/sketch, and key metaphor.

Takeaway: This is create for linking business objectives with design as well as having all of these based on previous research.

A/B Testing

Summary: A/B testing is a strategy to compare two different versions of designs so that you can see which one performs closer to the business goals.

Takeaway: This is very valuable because sometimes the one that you expect to do better actually doesn’t so it is good to know which design actually benefits the business.

KJ Technique

Summary: This technique is a different way of structuring a meeting so that everyone’s voices can be heard and the group can come to a consensus faster on tasks and direction of the meeting.

Takeaway: Silence is really important in this technique because it allows everyone to be on the same playing field and makes it easier for the group to come together.

Wizard of OZ

Summary: This technique is when a researcher convinces the user that the application/product they are interacting with actually works because the researcher is controlling and making the application/product react to the interaction to simulate what it is supposed to do.

Takeaway: This technique is great for figuring out how a user feels about a system or design before investing time and money into developing it especially when it comes to complex technologies like VR/AR.

Cardboard modeling

Summary: Cardboard is a powerful tool to explain your design through models and this article explains different techniques to make different types of models like a cylinder, a cube, and a slider and how to move beyond these simple models as well.

Takeaway: Cardboard models can be used to show mechanisms and for engineering purposes you have to be aware of friction and make sure the materials slide easily against each other and don’t bite into one another.

Connection to real-world example

I really liked the universal methods of design because I heard the names of some of the techniques and have done a few as well as a product desginer however I really appreciated the ones that I wrote abbobut. I think it is important to make sure the complete team (stakeholders, developers, business analysts, desiigners, etc) are all on the same page and are involved throughout the different stages. I can imagine without some of these techniques you could run into an issue of a business goal being misinterpreted by the designer or the team could not understand the research completely and design something that doesn’t accomplish what they are trying to accomplish.

Burning Questions

When is a cardboard prototype enough to show your concept? What limitations do cardboard prototypes have and when is it faster to 3D print?