The Ask
In traditional user center design process, users are invited for design reviews and mock up tests, however, we want to push it one step further: we bring in users at the very first stage of idea generation. A designer's role here is not to come up with ideas based on user interview and observation, but to encourage users to clearly describe what they want through facilitating a series of brainstorm activities. Users become designers and designers become facilitators.
Exploration
The user group we picked are sixth grade elementary school students. They weren't quite happy about how they deal with indoor waste at school. We combined the whole brainstorming process along with a set of game activities we designed so that they can freely shape the solution in their mind while playing.
After several visits, We locked on the idea of embedding facial expression to represent positive/negative emotions for the three different waste at school. Olivia and I then applied this idea to the design of a trash bin for them.
