Introducing user participative design methods to industrial designers

Communication between designers and human factors specialists needs to be improved. Over the past few years we have been conducting a range of studies to explore and identify how to improve this communication deficit. A participatory design tool-set was designed to encourage designers and potential end-users of future interactive products to communicate their design intentions and user needs through the use of drawing and placing cards on a table with the use of some limited role-playing. This paper reports on two case studies conducted at two organisations involved in the development of consumer products. Suggestions are provided on how these type of design tools can be improved to increase acceptance by user interface designers.