From Consensus to Innovation. Evolving Towards Crowd-based User-Centered Design

ABSTRACT

The arising of new technologies ranging from smartphones to social networks is constantly increasing interactions between people. In the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) community, adapting technology to human nature is the key concern of User-Centered Design (UCD). However, UCD tends to neglect the emerging social dimension of technology: users are consulted in the design process, but they do not have any direct involvement or creative control over the developed technological solutions. On the other hand, the collaborative and social nature of the design process is getting increasingly explicit in the Product Design community, where well-established participatory approaches are applied to involve stakeholders, designers, and end-users in the creative process of new products. In this paper, we first provide a deep analysis of the state of the art of participatory approaches in the research literature. Then, we investigate how their integration with UCD leads not only to empower the role of end-users as active collaborators of designers towards a more democratic crowd-based UCD process,  but also to create innovation in the design process. We advocate that such innovation can be obtained by giving the right voice not only to the users who reach consensus in the design process but also to the marginals. We provide an explorative model, some experiments, and a sketch of the user interface to support our claim.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the Italian projects Social Museum e Smart Tourism (CTN01_00034_23154) and NEPTIS (PON03PE_00214_3), the Sapienza grants IT-SHIRT, GENDE (GENetic DEsign Best products evolve according to users feedback) and BPBots, and the Lazio regional initiative “Centro di eccellenza DTC Lazio.”

Notes

1.  Although there is no single, universal definition of ICT, the term is generally accepted to indicate those field of work consisting of technologies, devices, networking components, applications, and systems that combined allow people and organizations to interact in the digital world to fulfill information processing and communication functions (Anderson et al. (2002); Gunasekaran et al. (2008).

2.  According to (Morris, 2016), the Product Design community focuses on the set of strategic and tactical activities, from idea generation to commercialization, used to create a product design. In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible inventions and products. Of course, product designers can exploit ICT technologies as a means to create a new product, but their focus is mainly on the act of conceptualizing and designing the product itself.

3.  This choice has been made to emphasize that our focus is not on discussing the differences between CD and PD, but on investigating how to exploit some of their features to empower the role of end-users in the UCD process.

4.  We are aware that this is only one way to interpret UCD. The research literature is plenty of works where different interpretations of UCD are provided (see also Section 2 for a more detailed discussion about UCD).

5.  It is worth to notice that an earlier version of this discussion can be found in Hirschheim and Klein (1989) as well.

6.  See: https://www.ideo.com/eu.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tiziana Catarci

Tiziana Catarci is full professor in Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. Her main research interests are in theoretical and user-oriented aspects of Information Access, User Interfaces, Usability, Smart Environments, Digital Libraries, e-Learning, and Data Management. On these topics, she has published over 200 papers in international journals and conferences. Currently, she is Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality.

Andrea Marrella

Andrea Marrella is assistant professor at the Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. His research interests concern theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects in different areas of Computer Science, including Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, Reasoning about actions, Automated Planning and Process Mining. On these topics, he has published over 60 papers in international journals and conferences.

Giuseppe Santucci

Giuseppe Santucci is associate professor at Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. His main research activities concern Human-Computer Interaction, focusing on quality aspects of Information Visualization techniques and the application of Visual Analytics on predictive scenarios. On such topics, he has published more than 200 papers in international journals and conferences.

Mahmoud Sharf

Mahmoud Sharf is a PhD candidate at the Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. His research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, User Interface design, Usability and User Experience Engineering, Ubiquitous Computing, Mobile Software Engineering, Interaction for Smart Mobile Devices, Data Visualization, Augmented reality.

Andrea Vitaletti

Andrea Vitaletti is associate professor at Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy, on networking and IoT topics. He has (co-)authored more than 60 papers in journals and international conferences, mainly in the area of algorithms and protocols for wireless and sensor networks. His current research interests concern the design and the analysis of efficient protocols and algorithms for the IoT.

Loredana Di Lucchio

Loredana Di Lucchio is full professor in Design and Chair of the International Master of Science in Product Design at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. Her research interests are in the field of Product Design, focusing on the relationship between production, design and consumption exploring the phenomenon of new manufacturing processes. She authored several papers published in international journals and conferences in the field of Design.

Lorenzo Imbesi

Lorenzo Imbesi is full professor of Design, Director of Sapienza Design Research and Chair of the Design PhD at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. His research ranges over the role of design in the post-industrial society and the narrative, social and ethical impact of technology and products. At the moment, he is a member of the Cumulus Association Executive Board, the Executive Committee of EAD European Academy of Design, of the Board of SID Italian Society of Design. Additionally, he is co-Editor of Design Principles and Practices Journal and a member of the Editorial Board of The Design Journal and DIID Disegno Industriale.

Viktor Malakuczi

Viktor Malakuczi is a research fellow and adjunct professor at Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy. His research interests include digital fabrication, parametric and generative design, mass customization, contemporary craft, user experience design for cultural heritage. His doctoral research has investigated the possible strategies and necessary competencies for the meaningful adaptation of digitally fabricated products through the involvement of the user in an algorithmically enhanced design process.