Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

The relation between design and human beings is always remarkable in terms of products and services development, but, the necessity of exploring the protagonism of the human being, became clearer since studies related more complex problems resolution – the wicked or ill defined problems (BUCHANAN, 1992; RITTEL & WEBBER, 1973; CROSS, 2008) – and was explored in methodological propositions of user centered design (KRIPPENDORFF, 2001), design thinking (BROWN, 2010), and user experience design (UX) among many others, in which, the essence is to perceive empathy factors besides usual requirements. In this study, the utilization of specific tools is described, as for instance the marketing research, the mind map, the value engineering and value analysis, the brainstorm and the persona, configuring a typical sequence of the mechanism of divergence and convergence (CROSS, 2008): a metaphor that alludes the way the human brain processes information, analyzes and creates or discovers solutions (STERNBERG, 2000). This practical application was performed by students on a MBA program, with the purpose of developing a product and eventually services tied to it. The students, divided in groups composed with diverse profiles, have participated in multiple phases with expositive classes and several dynamics, as well as research phases. By the end of the course, the results were presented, after each group passed through all the phases, including prototyping and tests. The process was analyzed, and, the interfaces between all the phases were identified, allowing proposing a better performance of the informational flow along the process.