• Introduction
• Thesis   
  • Personal Design Research definition
  • Human Centered Design Research
  • Thesis goals
  • Work completed
• Project and Methods   
  • Introduction
  • Pre-research   
    • Bounding terms
    • Exploration of terms
  • Recruiting  
    • Overview
    • Process
    • Screening for ambivalence
  • Probes  
    • Overview
    • Evocative probes
    • Blank probes
    • Cameras
    • Distribution
  • Interviews  
    • Overview
    • Teams
    • Spaces
    • Photography
  • Analysis  
    • Approaches
    • Content based
    • Reflections
  • Findings  
    • Overview
    • Reflections
  • Outcomes
• Conclusion

Project and
Methods:
Outcomes:

Tools for comunicating to others

What is novel about the Women Who Play project is that its goal was not to innovate in the video game space or to create an intervention for women who play video games. The goal of the study was to complete the research, have some findings and insights, and communicate them to others. It is based on the belief that designers can do research for other designers to use not just for themselves.

The Tween Super Studio was funded by HP and at the end of the first term the class developed a book that was published for HPs internal use. They also traveled to HP labs to present and lead brainstorming sessions using the tools in the book. In this way the research was passed on to other designers, yet the class continued on to create its own product concept, Mobo. The class had, to that point, discovered a unique space in the tween world. It was a space that class defined through their research and then developed a set of tools for others to explore that space. The tween book is the collection of those tools.

The Blux Super Studio class created a "Design Research Brainstorming Room" which the class constructed for themselves but shared with students from other departments who used it to generate ideas of their. The Super Studio class went on to develop the Blux system concept.

It was my personal reaction to Blux that led me on this path. I was proud of the research and research room, and disappointed by the Blux system concept. It was that experience and seeing the positive reaction to the Tween book, the way it has moved out into the world and has a life of its own, that inspired me conduct a design research study where the outcome would be communication and not innovaton.

This has proven to be a challenge. Both the Tween book and Blux room were filled with tools for creative outcomes. These are new tools created from the findings and insights of the research intended to communicate those findings through their use. They are not summaries but rather things to be interacted with. This creative tool creation step requires yet another synthesis step from the designers. It is generally given that the reason for creating these tools is because they are meant to be used by other creatives who will respond to the textural, ambiguous nature of them. The outcome goal of WWP is different. It did not intend to create new knowledge or define a space and create tools for understanding it. The goal was a journalistic one: to see what was there and share it. Or as Tuuli Mattelmäki said at a recent Probe Q&A "to reveal new experiences."

Gamer Portraits is one outcome of Women Who Play. It presents the women in the study through the lenses of the materials they returned and tells both their stories and the insights of the project. In this way the findings are comunicated without constructing artificial personas, or scenarios. Rather it is the real, highly edited portraits of the women that are forgrounded. As the designer my voice is represented through the curitorial and design process, while the women’s voices are kept ever present. This forgrounding also reinforces two main goals of human centered research: to build empathy with participants and to reveal new experiences. Many iterations of this book were created; each one communicating the findings of the project in different ways. It was through this process that the strength of using portaits was found.

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