1. Participants involved in card-sorting exercise 

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... statement above reflected a user-centred tone with a strong emphasis on perception towards technology rather than on specific functional requirements. This was very encouraging as it was hoped that this insight would be achieved. Prior to the workshops, all designers expressed concern about the card-sorting design tool and were hesitant about a process they were not directly in control of. They were unsure how participants would react to vague or unclear proposals and did not relish the prospect of deliberately placing themselves in a situation where they had uncer- tain or no design proposals to offer the participants. As one of the designers said, ‘ we don’t want them going away thinking we can’t design a cooker ’. Certainly the designers felt no ownership of the design tool before the workshops. However, later the reaction was very different. They were encouraged with how participants dealt with the situation and surprised at the participants’ level of creativity. There was sufficient evidence to suggest that contextually based user–product design data could be gathered. The use of the design tools was clearly enjoyed by both participants and designers and acceptance for their use was achieved. However, the interaction model (a task plan based on the layout and placement of cards on the table) was not used effectively as it could have been. The designers did not support or assist in the insertion of function cards at recognised stages or urge participants to consider the implications of adding functions into the task map. If this had been done, it may have helped participants to consider the implications of their actions more critically. The relationship between objectives and outcomes of the card-sorting exercises needed to be more clearly defined and to be made explicit for both the designers and participants. Although a rich source of design data was gathered, the designers were not equipped to capture or control the type and quality of design data generated. More guidance by the researchers was required to help the product designers design the cards, for example, coding methods, illustrations, colour, and shape of cards. Card composition required more consideration to accurately trigger discussion about potential user behaviour and needs. The designers felt little compulsion to support their final design proposals using data gained from the card-sorting tool. To solve this problem, the designers decided to design the cards and the card-sorting exercises themselves. They streamlined the number of card-sorting exercises to one single activity, which they thought yielded the best results. The exercise in effect was a merger of the first two exercises in the first study – placement of task and function cards. To ensure more discrimination and active selection of function cards, a ‘func- tion filter’ was introduced where each card had to be assessed on two criteria: frequency and importance of use. Functions that rated highly on both criteria were then introduced first into the task plan. The quality and detail of the design data using this type of design tool was ‘attenu- ated’. That is to say, the detail and scope of design issues discussed will inevitably be less detailed than using ethnographic or participative studies using trained designers or researchers. In the following study, attention needed to be placed on providing the right balance to gain the correct level of attenuation from the data-gathering process and the impact of using outcomes from these data to inform design decision making. Therefore, to improve the accurate selection of important and relevant design data, a second, scenario-based, design tool was introduced. Scenario-based design methods have been used in HCI to help design complex system requirements. The main advantage of such an approach is allowing open-ended and ill-defined problems to be explored in structured and tangible ways. The complexity and subtlety of interaction makes comprehensive descriptions of activity difficult. The use of scenarios as a design tool has evolved in HCI as a mechanism to describe complex activity and allow designers to engage in and articulate design intentions (Carroll 2000; Jacobson et al. 1999) and have been successfully applied through the ‘use case’ approach in object-oriented software engineering (Constantine and Lockwood 1999). A scenario-based design method appeared the most attractive option due to its flexibility and openness to interpretation. The scenario design tool permitted designers and participants to explore proposed concepts while acting or role playing within a selected scenario. The intention was that participants would be able to make more informed and context-sensitive judgements about the range of design proposals that had been suggested in card-sorting exercises. In order to make the design tools sufficiently malleable, participants used paper-based prototypes to enact their activity and walk through the interaction procedure. Amendments would be made in discussion with designers where possible new prototype variants could be rapidly introduced into the scenario. In contrast to the first study, the designers now facilitated the workshops and made improvements, which they felt would increase their control over the process. To obtain a realistic understanding of the applicability of the design tools, experimental intervention was now kept to the absolute minimum. This was essential to ensure that natural organisational factors influence the effectiveness of the design tools, and not experimental procedure. The design group had been commissioned to review their microwave product range, including the design of new or improved interface design functions. Two designers, who had been involved in the previous study, were provided with an hour- long tutorial explaining how to use the scenario-based design tool. A cooking scenario was selected, which the designers felt would require useful challenges in using a microwave, such as planning when and how to use the microwave. Two card-sorting workshops were first carried out, each with five non-design employees. Figure 5.1 illustrates a card-sorting workshop in action. During the card- sorting workshops, the designers recorded any thoughts or comments on a large flip chart and photographed key events, such as the completed task map. The key outcome from the card-sorting workshops was a user-requirements brief in the form of a large (1.5 m wide and 1.0 m) board. This was used to form a tab board for the next design tool, scenario design, which was based on preferred function cards clustered into cells. Tabs were small, annotated sketches of preferred or suggested function variants produced from the card-sorting exercise for participants to select in the scenario design workshops. Examples of tabs are provided in Fig. 5.2, illustrating variant ‘start’ controls. The scenario design workshops were planned in a similar way to card sorting with two volunteer participants from the previous card-sorting workshops. Participants repeated the same task, but performed it as a real task using a working kitchen. Although they had to use a microwave oven, they could only operate the microwave ‘through’ the tab board and prototype interface (see Fig. 5.3, the tab board is at the rear of the picture). A conventional oven could not be used to force the participants to select and consider tabs (control and display components) and to discuss the usability of each component device. Participants carried out the scenario by following a recipe and were encouraged to discuss their thoughts and ideas on the design of the proposed microwave interface. Alterations to any design proposal or tabs could be made at any time. The selected tabs were used to build up a paper prototype (see Fig. 5.4) based purely on the specific needs of the participants within a given ...