Title: Is this a design-worthy dilemma? Identifying relevant and inspiring concern conflicts as input for user-centred design

Authors: Deger Ozkaramanli; Pieter Desmet; Elif Özcan

Addresses: Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands; School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Harrison-Hughes Building, L69 3GH Liverpool, UK ' Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands ' Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract: Personal dilemmas can be valuable starting points for user-centred design. Since dilemmas prevail in everyday life, designers can identify many dilemmas relevant for a given design brief. It can therefore be a challenge to choose a target dilemma as a means to frame an appropriate problem space. To address this challenge, this paper proposes seven qualities of 'design-worthy' dilemmas. These key qualities were derived from a cross-comparison of four dilemma-driven design cases, and were clustered in three categories: 1) relevance for target users; 2) potential to inspire design ideas; 3) meaningful formulation of conflicting concerns. The qualities of design-worthy dilemmas explicate the considerations designers have when selecting a target dilemma, and thus, they can facilitate introspection and discussion in problem framing. In addition, the case studies demonstrate the main activities involved in dilemma-driven design, namely discovery, definition, and application.

Keywords: concern conflict; dilemma-driven design; user-centred design; problem framing; design process.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2017.084506

Journal of Design Research, 2017 Vol.15 No.1, pp.17 - 42

Received: 26 Mar 2016
Accepted: 22 Nov 2016
Published online: 09 Jun 2017 *

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