LEE- Endüstri Ürünleri Tasarımı Lisansüstü Programı - Yüksek Lisans
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Yazar "Gürel, Rengin" ile LEE- Endüstri Ürünleri Tasarımı Lisansüstü Programı - Yüksek Lisans'a göz atma
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ÖgeRethinking cultural probes through metaphors: The case of working from home(Graduate School, 2023-06-12) Gürel, Rengin ; Çelikoğlu, Özge ; 502191920 ; Industrial DesignUser-centered design focuses on users and their experiences to guide, inform, and inspire the design process. Toward a better understanding of the user experience, designers and design researchers rely on user data obtained by a variety of user research methods. Some of these data collection methods such as cultural probes and semi-structured interviews are suitable to collect narratives from users that reveal their thoughts, wishes, and aspirations. Although design research has focused on the potential of user narratives to direct the design process, the metaphors in these narratives have not been fully explored. Metaphors are present in many aspects of daily life, including language, thought, and behavior. And, they are not merely literary devices that help to understand one thing in terms of another. Metaphors form the way people think and experience the world. And they are the devices that help to convey one's experience and encourage creative thinking. The literature review shows that the relationship between design and metaphors is explored by many researchers. Previous studies on metaphors and design predominantly focuses on how designers use metaphors as an instrument for creativity and inspiration. Designers employ metaphors to come up with unique answers to design problems. However, design literature mostly explores metaphors created by designers, and studies that pay attention to how metaphorical narratives of users can communicate their experience and inspire the design process remain limited. From this perspective, this thesis aims to explore how metaphors in user narratives can stimulate designers to generate design concepts. Design research utilizes various innovative methods to inform and inspire the design process such as workshops, collage, card sorting, and cognitive mapping. Among these, the cultural probes approach has gained prominence and is frequently employed to collect qualitative data based on the self-documentation of the participants. Maps, postcards, and other items are gathered together in probe kits, which are designed to elicit creative responses. The cultural probes method enables users to express themselves freely because the researcher and participants are not in the same environment. Therefore, this strategy helps to comprehend the user experience, including the aspects of people's life that are not immediately accessible to designers. As a result, the cultural probes method promotes the creative design of products and systems. One of the experiences that designers and design researchers need to comprehend in order to develop better products and systems is the working practices of users. Working from home practice, though it dates back to the late 1990s, has recently been popularized as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the practice of working from home has become more common in developing countries due to poor traffic conditions, the spread of computers, and easy access to mobile phones, it has been discussed in the literature that working from home may become a norm in the future. For this reason, making sense of this practice from the perspective of the user is important in terms of its contribution to the design literature and discipline. In this thesis, the cultural probes approach is employed to gather user data in the form of literal and metaphorical text to comprehend users' experiences working from home. The study focuses on how metaphorical speech can reveal details about the user experience, and influence the ideation stage of the design process. The research relies on semi-structured interviews along with the cultural probes method to collect data from designers. Then, the study utilizes the qualitative content analysis method to analyze the collected data from users, and designers. The empirical study conducted in the scope of this thesis includes three phases, which are explained in the sixth chapter. In phase I, user research was conducted to investigate the users' working from home experience. The user research aimed to gather user narratives with literal and metaphorical contents with the cultural probes method. In phase II, the collected user data were communicated to the participating designers along with a design brief. Lastly, in phase III designers responded to the presented user data, and how they utilized them in their design ideation process. The study relies on qualitative content analysis to analyze two sets of data: user narratives collected with cultural probes, and designer responses that contain their reflections on the material, and initial design ideas. The findings of the study are presented on three main topics: findings on the users' experience working from home, followed methodology, and use of metaphorical narratives in design ideation. The findings of the research suggest that narratives with metaphorical contents can inspire designers during their ideation process, and encourage designers to empathize with users. In terms of generated design ideas, the study indicates that metaphorical narratives lead to more thorough design ideas, which are more detailed and holistic compared to the ideas triggered by only the literal user narratives. Moreover, metaphorical user tales served as the inspiration for design concepts that heavily focus on the concept of interaction. According to the study carried out for this thesis, user accounts with metaphorical expressions may be vital tools for understanding user experience and serving as an inspiration for design practice.