Design now has many meanings. For some, it is the creation of value. For others, it is the conception and creation of artefacts. For still others it is fitting things to people. These differences reflect disciplinary values that both overlap and diverge. All involve artefacts: we always design things. Each definition considers people and purpose in some way. Each handles evaluation differently, measuring against aesthetics, craft standards, specifications, sales, usage experiences, or usage outcomes. There are both merits and risks in these differences, without an appropriate balance. Poor balance can result from professions claiming the centre of design for their discipline, marginalising others. Process can also cause imbalance when allocating resources to scheduled stages. Balance is promoted by replacing power centres with power sharing, and divisive processes with integrative progressions. A focus on worth guides design towards worthwhile experiences and outcomes that generously exceed expectations. This book places a worth focus (Wo-Fo) in the context of design progressions that are Balanced, Integrated, and Generous (BIG). BIG and Wo-Fo are symbiotic. Worth provides a focus for generosity. Effective Wo-Fo needs BIG practices.

This book introduces the concept of worth for design teams, relates it to experiences and outcomes, and describes how to focus on worth when researching and expressing design opportunities for generous worth. Truly interdisciplinary teams also need an appropriate common language, which was developed in the companion book Worth-Focused Design, Book 1: Balance, Integration, and Generosity (Cockton, 2020a). Its new lexicon for design progressions enables a framework for design and evaluation that works well with a worth focus. Design now has different meanings based upon the approach of different disciplinary practices. For some, it is the creation of value. For others, it is the conception and creation of artefacts. For still others, it is fitting things to people (beneficiaries). While each of these design foci has merits, there are risks in not having an appropriate balance across professions that claim the centre of design for their discipline and marginalise others. Generosity is key to the best creative design—delivering unexpected worth beyond documented needs, wants, or pain points. Truly interdisciplinary design must also balance and integrate approaches across several communities of practice, which is made easier by common ground. Worth provides a productive focus for this common ground and is symbiotic with balanced, integrated, and generous (BIG) practices. Practices associated with balance and integration for worth-focused generosity are illustrated in several case studies that have used approaches in this book, complementing them with additional practices.

People relate to other people, not to simplified types or segments. This is the concept that underpins this book. Personas, a user centered design methodology, covers topics from interaction design within IT, through to issues surrounding product design, communication, and marketing. Project developers need to understand how users approach their products from the product’s infancy, and regardless of what the product might be. Developers should be able to describe the user of the product via vivid depictions, as if they – with their different attitudes, desires and habits – were already using the product. In doing so they can more clearly formulate how to turn the product's potential into reality. Based on 20 years’ experience in solving problems for businesses and 15 years of research, currently at the IT University of Copenhagen, Lene Nielsen is Denmark’s leading expert in the persona method. She has a PhD in personas and scenarios, and through her research and practical experiences has developed her own approach to the method – 10 Steps to Personas. This second edition of Personas – User Focused Design presents a step-by-step methodology of personas which will be of interest to developers of IT, communications solutions and innovative products. This book also includes three new chapters and considerable expansion on the material in the first edition.

Understanding emotions is becoming ever more valuable in design, both in terms of what people prefer as well as in relation to how they behave in relation to it. Approaches to conceptualising emotions in technology design, how emotions can be operationalised and how they can be measured are paramount to ascertaining the core principles of design. Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics provides a multi-dimensional approach to studying, designing and comprehending emotions in design. It presents emotions as understood through basic human-technology research, applied design practice, culture and aesthetics, ethical approaches to emotional design, and ethics as a cultural framework for emotions in design experience. Core elements running through the book are: cognitive science – cognitive-affective theories of emotions (i.e., Appraisal); culture – the ways in which our minds are trained to recognise, respond to and influence design; and ethics – a deep cultural framework of interpretations of good versus evil. This ethical understanding brings culture and cognition together to form genuine emotional experience. This book is essential reading for designers, technology developers, HCI and cognitive science scholars, educators and students (at both undergraduate and graduate levels) in terms of emotional design methods and tools, systematic measurement of emotion in design experience, cultural theory underpinning how emotions operate in the production and interaction of design, and how ethics influence basic (primal) and higher level emotional reactions. The broader scope equips design practitioners, developers and scholars with that ‘something more’ in terms of understanding how emotional experience of technology can be positioned in relation to cultural discourse and ethics.

This book is an account of how I addressed the need for a smartphone app that would allow someone with Type 1 diabetes to self-manage their condition. Its presentation highlights the major features of the app’s interface design. They include the selection of metaphors appropriate to a user’s need to form a mental model of the app; the importance of visible context; the benefits of consistency; and considerations of a user’s cognitive and perceptual abilities. The latter is a key feature of the book. But the book is also about the design process, and especially about the valuable contributions made by the many focus group meetings in which design ideas were first presented to people with Type 1 diabetes. Their critique, and sometimes their rejection, of interface ideas were crucial to the development of the app. I hope this book will prove useful for teaching and design guidance.

This book introduces Participatory Design to researchers and students in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). Grounded in four strong commitments, the book discusses why and how Participatory Design is important today. The book aims to provide readers with a practical resource, introducing them to the central practices of Participatory Design research as well as to key references. This is done from the perspective of Scandinavian Participatory Design. The book is meant for students, researchers, and practitioners who are interested in Participatory Design for research studies, assignments in HCI classes, or as part of an industry project. It is structured around 11 questions arranged in 3 main parts that provide the knowledge needed to get started with practicing Participatory Design. Each chapter responds to a question about defining, conducting, or the results of carrying out Participatory Design. The authors share their extensive experience of Participatory Design processes and thinking by combining historical accounts, cases, how-to process descriptions, and reading lists to guide further readings so as to grasp the many nuances of Participatory Design as it is practiced across sectors, countries, and industries.

This is the first of two books concerned with engineering design principles for Human-Computer Interaction-Engineering Design Principles (HCI-EDPs). The book presents the background for the companion volume. The background is divided into three parts and comprises—"HCI for EDPs," "HCI Design Knowledge for EDPs," and "HCI-EDPs—A Way Forward for HCI Design Knowledge." The companion volume reports in full the acquisition of initial HCI-EDPs in the domains of domestic energy planning and control and business-to-consumer electronic commerce (Long, Cummaford, and Stork, 2022, in press). The background includes the disciplinary basis for HCI-EDPs, a critique of, and the challenge for, HCI design knowledge in general. The latter is categorised into three types for the purposes in hand. These are craft artefacts and design practice experience, models and methods, and principles, rules, and heuristics. HCI-EDPs attempt to meet the challenge for HCI design knowledge by increasing the reliability of its fitness-for-purpose to support HCI design practice. The book proposes "instance-first/class-first" approaches to the acquisition of HCI-EDPs. The approaches are instantiated in two case studies, summarised here and reported in full in the companion volume. The book is for undergraduate students trying to understand the different kinds of HCI design knowledge, their varied and associated claims, and their potential for application to design practice now and in the future. The book also provides grounding for young researchers seeking to develop further HCI-EDPs in their own work.