Open-ended design

In the M1.2 user-class we were asked to develop an application in the field of open ended play for the skate environment. I worked with Ivo Stuyfzand, Emar Vegt and Freek Boesten. The client of this project was the Area51 Skate park in Eindhoven. Open ended play is basically providing people with (technological) tools to develop their own games or activities. The goal of our project was to have a high user involvement in applying the Reflective Transformative Design Process (Hummels & Frens, 2008).

Project SkateCam from Willem Knijnenburg on Vimeo.

We have conducted three iterations during this project. We started by identifying interesting factors for play and we developed low fidelity prototypes to test these factors. During this process we found out that giving feedback on speed or distance degrades the creative sport of skating. Instead, we focused on the skater’s ego and style by creating skate camera and a video wall in the park. We concluded the session by conducting a co-operative design session and reflecting upon our process in our report.

I have learned to see the Reflective Transformative Design Process (RTDP) as a philosophy rather than a process. The RTDP does not steer me in any direction but it promotes rapid changes between diverse design actions. I have noticed that I often work in a sequence of analysis, idea development, prototyping and concept validation. I repeat this process several times in multiple iterations. The reflections between the conducted steps sometimes results in a new sequence.