Designing for the Unknown: Methods for Exploring New Problem Spaces

When conducting research around speculative products and services, how do you get participants to think outside of existing paradigms? If you’re designing a driverless car, how do you encourage participants to think past what they like about their current car? If you’re redesigning your office, how do you encourage participants to try a new reconfiguration? Research methods are often centered around uncovering user needs but what do you use when the product paradigm is shifting and you want to explore new interactions?

Join us to discuss and try out several participatory workshop methods for setting the groundwork with participants to explore innovative design solutions. You’ll come away with an understanding of how to start with the problem space rather than a proposed solution and concrete methods to use during exploratory participant workshops. This workshop is great for anyone looking for new ways to engage in co-design for innovative products and services.

Schedule
6:30 - Networking

6:45 - Introductions and Icebreaker

7:00 - Presentation: Research Beyond the Existing Paradigm

7:15 - Activity: Introduce and Try Out the Workshop Methods

8:15 - Debrief

8:30 - End

About the Presenters

Lisa Otto is a UX researcher at EchoUser, a full-service research and design firm based in San Francisco, CA with offices in Washington, DC and Boulder, CO. She has a MDes from Carnegie Mellon and has worked previously as a designer with a variety of tech companies and small businesses.

Laura Chang is a Director at EchoUser, and has helped a variety of organizations across the private and public sectors adopt and apply human-centered design. She previously worked at Google and studied Product Design at Stanford.