Co-Designer Interviews

What is a co-designer interview?

TODO

How do you plan an interview?

TODO

• What is the activity they want to do,

• What each stage of currently trying to do the activity is like,

• What factors make it unpleasant or impossible,

• Why doing the activity more independently matters to the individual,

• What it feels like to accept the many things you cannot change in a single project,

• What it feels like to look for things that do not yet have easily discoverable workable solutions, and

• A lot of stuff you do not know now, you will not know during the project, and you will forget others do not understand.

Needs and Ideas

Once you have found a co-designer and had a chance to conduct an interview, let's think back to the Design Process section:

What are some of the sub-problems that your product must solve? Draw a functional diagram of the product, and tell us what the inputs and outputs of the functional diagram are. As a reminder, inputs and outputs are typically energy, material, control, or signals associated with your product.

Do some searching to see if existing products can address these problems. Oftentimes in assistive technology, off-the-shelf products may come close to solving a problem, but need some modification - that is where you can come in. Alternatively, sometimes, commercial solutions exist, but are prohibitively expensive. Would it be feasible for you to create a more (financially) accessible version of the product? Those are just two ways of staying with a product idea even if something technically exists in the market already.

Now regardless of what your search came up with, come up with a few other ways of solving the problem. Come up with at least three different alternative ways to solve the problem you identified. Don't worry if the solutions sound silly or impractical, this step is mainly to get all your ideas down.

Once you have a few ideas in mind, narrow them down to something specific you want to try. Write a description of your design, and how it addresses co-designer needs. How does it compare to your product specifications? 

Also, produce some visual representation of your product ideas. For most physical products, a drawing or CAD figure would be very helpful (remember to include dimensions when appropriate). For electronics and software, figures such as circuit diagrams, flow diagrams (for how your software progresses) and wireframes can help visually convey your design. These items will be important for your first design review.