{"id":1256,"date":"2011-01-24T17:34:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T16:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2019-11-06T17:45:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T16:45:01","slug":"unintentionally-designing-with-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/unintentionally-designing-with-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Unintentionally designing with users."},"content":{"rendered":"

Participatory design is the idea of involving every stakeholder in design decisions when creating or maintaining a product or service. As a formal process, it is at the more extreme end of human centred design \u2013 rather than just analysing users and using this to inform the design; it gives the user\u2019s direct control over the direction a project takes.<\/p>\n

Sometimes this handing over of control can happen accidentally, when user\u2019s behaviour or meme\u2019s become formally incorporated into, or define the very core of how a service works. Today I\u2019ll be considering a few examples of this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unintentional user-led design can be seen in the development of Twitter. Originally there were no common ways of directing a tweet towards an individual (@), or indicating an ongoing conversation between multiple people (#). It wasn\u2019t until a year after twitter\u2019s launch was introduced that Chris Messina suggested using # for group discussion, which he later pitched to the Twitter team. They rejected it, stating it was \u2018too nerdy\u2019. However it was users who adopted the practise, such as during the reaction to San Diego\u2019s forest fires, and now the practise is commonplace.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Binoculars\"

Such as #outsideyourwindow<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The adoption of hashtags (and the @ sign) by users caused the Twitter team to incorporate it into their service, with \u2018trending topic\u2019 hashtags now being displayed on twitter\u2019s front page. Although the idea was initially rejected by Twitter, we can see that users did, unintentionally, guide design decisions in the evolution of Twitter.<\/p>\n

A second example of unintentional user behaviour being incorporated into the design of a product was found during the production of Burnout Paradise. Play testers were brought in to play the game and allow developers to understand a \u2018real player\u2019s perspective\u2019. However, they noticed that some play testers developed some interesting behaviour. Within the game there were spaces between parked cars or scenery, and play testers were accelerating towards them, pulling a handbrake turn, and performing \u2018extreme parking\u2019. Think Arnie in True Lies, or Jim Carrey in that terrible Ace Ventura sequel style parking.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Parking\"

Something like this...<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Having noticed that multiple players were acting in this way, making their own \u2018meta game\u2019 during play, developers then incorporated this as official challenges and objectives within the game\u2019s campaign. Hence, user\u2019s once again become unintentional design partners.<\/p>\n

A similar incorporation of user behaviour and design can be seen in forums and \u2018link\u2019 websites such as reddit. When linking to \u2026sensitive\u2026 material, users commonly denote this by tagging a link with NSFW (\u201cNot Safe for Work\u201d), or somethingawful\u2019s NMS (\u201cNot Mind Safe\u201d) for the more surreal content. This practise, created by users, has been formally incorporated by many websites, as can be seen in reddit where, if an item is marked \u2018NSFW\u2019, the thumbnail preview image is turned off.<\/p>\n

In all these examples we\u2019ve seen that users can not only provide useful insight into how a system should works, but, particularly with collaborative services with the ability to iterate behaviour quickly over time, can create and define the very way in which a service works. Unintentionally, they have become design partners, and have come closer to embracing the idea of participatory design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participatory design is the idea of involving every stakeholder in design decisions when creating or maintaining a product or service. 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