Designing a Card-Based Design Tool to Bridge Academic Research & Design Practice For Societal Resilience

Title of the Paper

Designing Card-Based Design Tools to Bridge the Gap Between Academic Research and Social Resilience Design Practices

Document Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Social Resilience Design Tools
• Keywords: Translational Design Tools, Design Cards, Designers, Social Resilience, Design Sprints

Research Background and Issues

• Problems and Challenges:

  • While academic research in HCI provides design guidelines, models, and frameworks, designers often struggle to apply these academic insights in practice.
  • Academic guidelines are typically abstract, difficult to comprehend, and insufficiently specific, hindering their practical application.
  • A significant "research-practice" gap exists between academic research and design practice, limiting collaboration and knowledge sharing.

• Research Motivation:

  • To translate academic research into more comprehensible and practice-relevant content through translational tools such as design cards.
  • Previous work has primarily focused on areas like behavior change and personal health informatics, with limited research on tools for designing social resilience.
  • Crises like COVID-19 highlight the importance of social resilience, a multidimensional research topic encompassing social, economic, and environmental factors.

• Research Questions:

  1. How can a card-based translational design tool be designed to support designers in applying academic insights to social resilience design?
  2. How do designers use these card tools to integrate academic research insights into their design processes?

Solution

• Proposed Approach:

  • Designed and developed a set of social resilience design cards to help designers understand and apply academic research on social resilience through three types of cards: themes, details, and examples.
  • The cards are based on theoretical concepts derived from academic research frameworks (e.g., "Space-Activity Framework" and "Dynamic Support Ecosystem Framework") and provide open-ended questions, recommendations, and examples to support designers' thinking.

• Innovations:

  • Utilized a multi-level theme-detail structure to break down complex academic theories into small, comprehensible, and applicable modules.
  • Provided digital cards to support collaboration in remote or hybrid design teams.
  • Combined open-ended question design with textual and visual examples to inspire designers' creative thinking and guide them in exploring design opportunities.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Select Theoretical Frameworks: Adopted the "Space-Activity Framework" and "Dynamic Support Ecosystem Framework" to cover the multidimensional characteristics of social resilience.
  2. Translate Theories into Cards: Retained all key content from the frameworks and their substructures while simplifying and presenting them in the form of questions and examples.
  3. Design Card Content: Used visual distinctions and thought-provoking language to optimize designers' understanding and usage.
  4. Card Testing and Iteration: Conducted experiments and gathered feedback from 14 student designers and 8 professional designers, iteratively refining and improving the cards based on their input.
  5. Utilize Digital Platforms: Implemented the card tool on online platforms like Figma to support remote and real-time collaboration.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:

  • Developed a digital set of social resilience design cards, comprising 16 cards in total: 1 overview card, 1 instruction card, 3 theme cards, 7 detail cards, and 4 example cards.
  • The cards were successfully applied in design interactions, where designers proposed numerous innovative solutions for social resilience.

• Comparative Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • The open-ended questions and practical examples provided by the cards effectively facilitated designers in exploring uncharted design spaces.
  • The cards supported various uses, such as problem analysis in unfamiliar domains, brainstorming design ideas, and reflecting on and reevaluating designs.

• Experimentation and Evaluation Results:

  • Designers generally found the cards helpful in simplifying complex knowledge in the field of social resilience.
  • Experiments demonstrated that the cards enabled designers to efficiently generate multiple design solutions focused on social relationships and support, such as "community mutual aid platforms" and "diary exchange services" (see detailed design list in results).
  • The open-ended design of the cards stimulated creative thinking while avoiding excessive constraints on designers.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:

    • The limited amount of information on the cards might result in certain aspects of complex issues being overlooked.
    • The designers participating in the experiments were not experts in the field of social resilience.
    • The effectiveness of the cards was primarily tested in digital environments, without covering all practical scenarios.

  • Future Directions:

    • Explore the effectiveness of the tool with a broader range of users, including community members and project managers.
    • Investigate how to integrate the card tool with other design tools, such as scenario frameworks or surveys.
    • Develop methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of the design cards, such as comparing the outcomes of card-based and non-card-based design processes.

Suggestions for Output Enhancement

• Expand Scenarios: Consider more application scenarios for social resilience, such as social inequality and environmental sustainability.
• Enhance Functionality: Add more interactive features, such as design logs and card tutorials.
• Improve Visualization: Explore ways to enhance visual appeal, such as incorporating multimedia examples.

These improvements could significantly enhance the ease of learning and using the design tool, while effectively bridging the gap between academic research and practical application.