The day began with a feedback round for the homework. Each student was tasked to choose a user experience from the previously conducted interviews and create an experience pattern. This experience pattern was divided into the needs of the user that were satisfied in the experience, the interactions that happened and the resulting emotions of the event. Each student explained the experience they chose and how they came up with their respective experience pattern. Some feedback was about the chosen needs for the pattern (e.g. competence, relatedness, popularity, stimulation, security), which were sometimes inaccurately selected or were in the wrong order. The abstraction level of the interactions was also criticized since some interactions were to specific and couldn’t be applied to other contexts that well.
An example would be the story about a mother that went to a restaurant. A waiter realized that she had a child with her and brought an adequate chair. The mother told the waiter that the child still couldn’t sit, so the waiter brought some pillows. The chosen interaction for the experience pattern was that a chair for a baby was provided, which was very specific. This had to be abstracted so it could fit a larger number of contexts. One idea was to reformulate the interaction “delivering a chair to the baby” to “providing a comfortable situation”.
Other feedback was about how the resulting emotions in some patterns may not actually be an emotion. Daniel concluded that all patterns were already good but needed some slight adjustments. The Students received the homework to apply the provided critic to their patterns.
After a short five-minute break, Daniel continued with some theoretical input about how to find a product idea. The provided criteria were, that the product
- had to address the need
- had to create an experience
- had to satisfy the pattern
- had to satisfy a purpose and a task or function
- may remove an obstacle
Students went for lunch and were tasked to think about product ideas. The resulting ideas were presented after the break. Daniel provided feedback, based on how the product fit the experience pattern and how the idea was in general. Students were asked to sign up for the workshop tour, which they will be using in the next week of the course. While a small group was shown the tools they would be using, the rest received feedback.
The workshop consists of two rooms. The first room contains two 3D printers, soldering irons, measuring devices and some electronic parts. One printer creates models in layers while the other hardens out the models in a resin liquid. Print tasks can be sent to the first printer through the software on the PC in the room or through an SD card slot in the printer.
The second room provides tools for wood working. We were instructed on how to handle those safely. The room also contains a laser cutter to cut and engrave wood or acrylic and a PC to send vector graphics as instructions to the machine. We were instructed how to use it and where to find the information to configure the laser cutter for different types of materials.
We were also shown an interesting design to activate the ventilation.
After all students went through the tour, we were instructed about how to write a product story. A story consists of
- an explanation of the baseline
- an experience baseline
- the framework for the experience which is addressing of the psychological needs
- the concrete interaction
- the situation after the interaction
The day ended with the rest of the students receiving feedback for their product ideas. Homework was to finish our product ideas and write our experience stories.
Blockpraktikum Experience Design 