Konferensartikel

Participatory design approaches involve users in the early phases of design process for imagining and creating new products or services, thus they can help collect users’ Kansei data. These approaches have been widely developed in Europe, especially in the Nordic countries where it originated, while it is not common in Japan. Since designing consists of social activities like group discussions, cultural differences between Japan and the Nordic countries might prevent the mapping of the technique into the Japanese context. In this paper, as a step for employing participatory design approach to collect users’ Kansei data, the study developed new tools for idea generation. The tools offer anonymity and playfulness where participants are expected to freely express their ideas. The tools were assessed in a lab-based experiment with sixteen Japanese subjects in terms of perceived creativity of the participants and design outcome. Findings show that both playfulness and anonymity lead to higher perceived creativity in idea generation. Besides, the introduction of anonymity increases critical discussion and participants’ perceived criticality of themselves in idea selection. These findings have the potential to be used in developing design tools for any specific cultural context.

Participatory design, cultural difference, anonymity, playfulness, design tool