Designers generally use human-centred design (HCD) methods to gain insights on the needs of the people they are designing for, and keep focus on these needs when creating solutions. In keeping with this focus, designers use their insights on User Experiences (UX) when making design-decisions. The focus of human-centred design expanded in the last decades from designing user-friendly products to designing a system of products and services (PSS) that provide good user experiences (UX). In a PSS design process, many actors and disciplines are involved: various professionals with different values depending on their expertise in the process of product design, service design, or business development. Put differently, PSS design can be seen as a networked process with many actors involved who are potential design decision makers in addition to the design professionals. Next to designers, e.g., product managers, marketeers, and service engineers make design-decisions that influence how products and services will be experienced. These design decision makers seem not to continue using the earlier gained UX-insights in decision making. As a result, changes on the original design are made that reduce UX quality. This research addresses the challenge of supporting design decision makers to continue the use of UX insights in networked design projects. The main research question guiding the research is what designers can do to prevent UX insights from getting lost in a networked design process. The research addresses this main question by exploring how and where UX insights get lost in networked design projects, and what barriers and opportunities can be identified to make networked design a human-centred project.@en

The study investigated the extent to which electronic voting is accessible to Dutch voters, especially the visually impaired, those with low literacy, and the elderly. Together with the different user groups, a series of electronic interfaces were developed and simulations of a vote-printer were built to run tests on large numbers of participants. The interface consisted of a card reader, a touchscreen and a printer; audio support was available via a headset. For participants with disabilities, the independent variables were visual impairment and low literacy. For elderly participants, the independent variable was age. All participants were asked to make specific choices on the screen and to check the printed result for their choice. As reference, they were asked to vote using the current Dutch ballot paper/red pencil system. The criteria used to determine the accessibility of both systems was: does the printed ballot match the intended vote? The vote-printer significantly increased independent voting by the visually impaired, however this was not seen for the low-literacy group. For the elderly, the use of a vote-printer with electronic interface is equally as accessible as the current paper ballot. All three groups reported using a vote-printer with electronic interface to be easier than the current paper ballot. The study confirmed that co-creating with intended users in the early conceptualization phase is key.

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This paper explores the social dimension of collaborative design from the perspective of Schön's reflective practice. An in-depth video protocol study was performed on the reflective practice in an experienced design team. It looks, in particular, at reframing: the process to find a new productive frame for subsequent activities. Reframing processes are amplified in a social context, requiring considerable time and effort on the part of design teams. Reframing has distinctive features that set it apart from other steps of reflective practice. Two iterative stages are discerned: sensemaking, to reconstruct prior operating frames; and future framing, to design a frame for future activities. Surprises incite reframing, and we argue that surprises are a source for team learning and innovation.

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The increased complexity in Product Service Systems development goes hand in hand with complex heterogeneous networks. A Human-Centred Design approach has been taken to understand such networked collaboration and to develop a framework having user-experiences guiding communication and collaboration among parties. The current work elaborates on the development of a framework for networked collaboration inspired by literature research of Actor Network Theory and Boundary Objects as well as insight gained in case studies and workshops. Iterative design of the framework has led to a 'landscape of interactions'. This landscape is applied as means to understand the networked collaborations and the designating of tools for designers in Product-Service System development.
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