hi my name is Anne Mackey Lesage from
HEC Montreal when design novices and
leggo meet our study looks at how to get
non-designer fully engaged in divergent
thinking during early HCI ideation to
sketch or not to sketch when it comes to
design thinking with non designer that's
the question isn't it
well literature tells us that sketching
is the best way to lake not yet fully
formed mental images - visual
representation through continuous
interaction and it's a good way because
it's quick to sketch and the fact that
it's imprecise is actually a good thing
it allows the team to mature idea in the
slow enough quick enough time so if they
could be explored away from the obvious
but but relying on sketching might not
be the best strategy considering that
most design novices are reluctant to
draw and they are often the dominant
group in design thinking sessions so
what do we do do we force them well of
course not most of us will just get
sticky notes out yeah okay so we use a
lot of sticky notes and most of the time
simply do try to work down a tool is a
cognitive artifact that responds to
needs of specific process and users it
would be surprising that for all our
creative processes there would be one
single answer so we are back to the
post-it or sketch it question well
actually this is touching on a bigger
issue which is how do we get the best
results out of Design Thinking with
non-designers well let's briefly look at
what's at play here when we talk about
design thinking we are referring to an
iterative human centered approach to
innovation and to reap innovation design
thinking must involve stakeholders from
all over the organization some will be
designers while most will be non
designers or design novices and this us
with them this
with non-designers is actually central
to design thinking furthermore to
innovate the team must fully engage in
cycles of divergent and convergent
thinking innovation will happen if the
divergent phase delivers a multitude of
alternative solution and the convergent
phase creatively hones down on a single
best solution however design novices who
are not trained into the divergent
thinking process will tend to fall back
on what they know best which is often to
go right back to convergent thinking
thus sidestepping divergent thinking
although non designers are very much
desired and central in design thinking
if the divergent phase is compromised
because novices do not fully understand
or trust the divergent process and shy
away from tools that support a slow
maturing of new idea then Design
Thinking may fall short of delivering
truly innovative solutions trust in the
process will be gained if the tools
provided deliver the goods while so we
considered cards clay Playmobil pictures
and chose to test Lego blocks because
they are abstract and figurative
constructive and ready-made and because
they are ready-made assembling them does
not require any particular skill
compared to sketching a research
question for this study was how does the
use of Lego compared to that of pen and
paper during the collaborative
conceptual ideation phase which is the
very beginning of the ideation
specifically we tested two hypotheses
what about the performance of the tool
so non designers using Lego would
deliver interface proposals showing
greater divergent thinking and the other
about the preparation to ideation we
hypothesize that teams experiencing a
Lego focused warm-up would deliver Lego
interfaces showing greater divergent
thinking
how we did this we had 44 non-designers
randomly themed into 22 diets the
participants average age was 26 and a
half they were evenly split between men
and women and they were recruited from
HEC alums we ran a between subjects a
comparative lab experiment where each
team worked with Lego for one ideation
and pen-and-paper for the other in
alternating order from one team to the
next in the first ideation they had to
come up with an interface for a
healthcare patient and in the second for
pharmacists they were presented with a
large set of Legos and duplo's of
abstract and figurative pieces the pen
and paper set had many large sheets of
paper felt tips and sticky notes of
different size and colors the tool set
and the two personas were presented to
them through 60-second videos this way
every team received the exact same
instructions so here briefly the warm-up
exercises were either to build a Lego
house together or team up for a
marshmallow challenge they had 14
minutes of ideation time after which
they had to explain every element of
their solution they did this for two
rounds varying tools and personas and in
the final interview they were asked to
compare the two experiences divergent
thinking was assessed through Torrance's
framework using four indicators fluency
for the number of ideas flexibility for
the breadth of ideas or a number of
categories elaboration for the amount of
detail associated with an idea and of
course originality for originality we
defer to Guilford's definition which
breaks it down into three qualities
uncommon remote clever fluency
flexibility and elaboration were
measured counted compared and heavily
discussed by two experts until they
agreed originality was assessed by
subjective scoring we asked to UX
designer to score every single interface
according to a complex grid once their
scoring
was done we average them to get what we
called their originality score to assess
all of these the experts and judges
relied on pictures of the interface
proposal and on the video and verbatim
of their explanations but before
assessing originality the two UX
designer felt they need to be more
specific about how to unmistakeably
recognize that three qualities they
really brought a UX lens to this
exercise for uncommon nest they looked
at unique ways to respond to the
personas needs putting extra weight on
pertinence for example persona one had
asked specifically for a calendar so
every team put a calendar in the
calendar concept was not automatically
scored low for being so common it was
scored according to how well or how
creatively it was exploited to really
respond to persona ones needs for
remoteness they look for verbal and
visual abstraction how far did they
stray away from conventional UI layout
which was actually too early to apply at
that point for cleverness they looked
for signs showing insight like the use
of the less obvious metaphor that would
capture the heart of the personas needs
cleverness is a quality that seems to
augment the power of the first two
indicators this is how we counted ideas
categories and elements this detail
shows one idea remote medical
consultation through hologram one
category because there was only one idea
here and five elements elaborating it
this pen and paper detail had six ideas
the six features four categories so the
basic info language patient filed staff
and calendar and six elements three
elaborating the basic info and three
elaborating the calendar a large number
of ideas categories and elements were
accounted for argued upon throughout the
forty-fourth
interfaces ok results on
qualitative level we observe that pen
and paper interfaces consisted of a
mixture between features lists and early
information architecture with the lego
proposal we observed that the
storytelling automatically included the
persona right at the center of the
proposal features were expressed through
what they did to the persona the
qualitative results will be seen really
briefly and discussed later
so hypothesis 1 was supported when
compared Lego delivered a significantly
higher number of elements than pen and
paper thus delivering more divergent
thinking and I'll come back to that
seeing this first result whether the
post hoc analysis to try to understand
how the indicators actually interacted
with each other
so for each tool we looked at the most
performant interfaces those that score
median and up to see if there was some
correlations between indicators with pen
and paper the only correlation we found
was that interfaces with higher counts
of idea also had a higher count of
categories with Lego interfaces a higher
count of elements correlated with a
higher count of ideas categories and
originality score as for hypothesis 2
well it was not supported the Lego
interfaces done after a Lego warm-up
were no different than those who had had
a regular warmup
we are identified two takeaways for this
study
one is methodological and so it was for
an improved tool to assess originality
in HCI interfaces by grounding
Guilford's indicator in the user
centered perspective so here on cominis
is understood as uniquely pertinent for
users remoteness implies moving away
from the conventional UI to explore the
solution space cleverness is actually
sparked by insight cleverness and
insight can be compounded with the other
two adding an element of surprise the
light or humor to
proposed concept but the main takeaway
of this study relates to our first
hypotheses non-designers using Lego come
up with interface proposal showing
greater divergent thinking than with
words on paper because Lego delivers
greater elaboration huh you're probably
thinking what elaboration really well
actually looking at the results the
verbatim and the measured results we
found that Lego elements actually change
what happens to idea
they make idea transmission richer once
an idea has taken shape in this
narrative media it offers more grounds
to rebound from to react to it says if
Lego amps up turns up the volume on the
creativity by giving them more to bounce
from as they explore and remember we
measured this with higher count of
element we measured significantly higher
count of ideas category originality
which was not the case with paper once
they had more elements from which to
bounce off then they got more original
ideas in other words they played along
involve more elements and then divergent
thinking said in taking them down an
unexpected path but having more elements
has another benefit for design it hints
at the complexity of the potential
interaction proposing a hologram medical
consultation and this was done in
pre-pandemic days well may have seemed
completely unrealistic but looking at
how they put it together suggests a
couple things first the way the lower
figurine is encased in a specific space
hints at either a need for privacy or it
may be expressing a sense of heavy
technology closer to that of an MRI then
zoom call but hey in either case it may
form a future the future interface by
revealing the participants mental model
which is great when working with non
designer because they are often more
candid more revealing so by comparison
here they seem to use words to remember
ideas like like a list Lego push the
ideas further because they had to think
them through metaphors with the results
that Lego objects appear to talk back to
them for example in this case this team
was looking for a way to illustrate the
calendar they came across the lego
fishing net which made them think about
network about using the calendar as a
hub for all types of scheduled
appointments even taking medicine it
ended up organizing the whole proposal
so these metaphor upholds many level of
late many levels sorry of late meanings
keeping the solution space open thus
fostering a slow maturing of ideas so
the strength of Lego blocks is having
non designer work through metaphors
because some of these metaphors talk
back to their authors some turns into
guiding principle for the project while
most reveal participants mental model by
relying on storytelling they keep
non-designer of user centered to keep
them thinking about the whole experience
so going back to the first question to
sketch or not to sketch well to sketch
and to play as long as the tool you use
helps you elaborate and rich and wild
leeks full or so I and Wiley explore new
ideas
keeping the diversion phase divergent
thank you
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