Abstract
The bridging design prototype (BDP) approach is a human-centred design method for individual designers and small organisations. BDPs are fully functional rapid prototypes that user communities accept to incorporate in real activities; while designers use them for learning about the community, the context, and the practice. Experimentation should not require the presence of designers. By functional, it means all features should operate. But, BDPs are not necessarily minimum viable products, as the digital or tangible materials with which they are built could have a limited lifespan. Informed by autonomous design, this reflection involved a meta-analysis of a project carried out in a Netherlands school. My BDP for preschool concept mapping was re-oriented to explore if it could be used as didactic tool to enhance interactive language learning in the education of children with speech impairments. The analysis illustrated BDPs enabled speech therapists, teachers, and counsellors to achieve goals of community design of itself. Three pilots, with escalating numbers in participation and duration, transformed this community’s practices. Explorations with BDP adaptations and a new design (an app for the interactive whiteboard developed by a teacher) transformed speech therapists and teachers into designers. This approach might be useful in autonomous design projects seeking community design, decentring external designer participation, and enabling users to become designers.
Keywords
bridging design prototypes; human-centred design; users as designers; autonomía and design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.032
Citation
Gomez, G.(2020) Bridging Design Prototypes & Autonomous Design, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers - DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.032
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Bridging Design Prototypes & Autonomous Design
The bridging design prototype (BDP) approach is a human-centred design method for individual designers and small organisations. BDPs are fully functional rapid prototypes that user communities accept to incorporate in real activities; while designers use them for learning about the community, the context, and the practice. Experimentation should not require the presence of designers. By functional, it means all features should operate. But, BDPs are not necessarily minimum viable products, as the digital or tangible materials with which they are built could have a limited lifespan. Informed by autonomous design, this reflection involved a meta-analysis of a project carried out in a Netherlands school. My BDP for preschool concept mapping was re-oriented to explore if it could be used as didactic tool to enhance interactive language learning in the education of children with speech impairments. The analysis illustrated BDPs enabled speech therapists, teachers, and counsellors to achieve goals of community design of itself. Three pilots, with escalating numbers in participation and duration, transformed this community’s practices. Explorations with BDP adaptations and a new design (an app for the interactive whiteboard developed by a teacher) transformed speech therapists and teachers into designers. This approach might be useful in autonomous design projects seeking community design, decentring external designer participation, and enabling users to become designers.