The psychological experience of prototyping Elizabeth Gerber, Segal Design Institute, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2133 Sheridan Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA Maureen Carroll, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University, Building 550, 416 Escondido Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA While scholars have studied what design practices accomplish, few have considered how people feel when enacting these practices. An eighteen-month ethnographic study of a high-tech firm examined the psychological experience of engaging in the practice of low-fidelity prototyping. The study finds that the production and rapid visualization of multiple ideas through low-fidelity prototyping allows practitioners to reframe failure as an opportunity for learning, supports a sense of forward progress, and strengthens beliefs about creative ability. Results suggest how design work practices can be designed to help employees manage in uncertain conditions. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: psychology of design, design management, design practice, design cognition, job design G race, a member of a design team at Big Tech, was initially overwhelmed by the complexity of her new assignment to create an online community and concerned about not making progress. As she described her idea to her colleagues, she struggled to communicate her ideas about all of the compo- nents of the site. She grabbed a pile of paper and began to prototype the site’s layout. With her low-fidelity prototype, or a minimally detailed physical manifes- tation of her idea, Sally, the knowledge management team lead, quickly engaged in the conversation and suggested asking a company developer to mock up a dig- ital, interactive version of the website. Grace commented, “I had a whole bunch of sketches that I gave to him [the developer]. And over the New Year’s weekend we essentially designed the thing and implemented it. So I still owe him. [She laughs.] But it was like, you know, ‘Here’s the goal. Here’s some sketches’.And by January, we actually had a system.” During an interview, Grace described how the rapid creation of a low-fidelity prototype, rather a time-intensive high- fidelity prototype online, accelerated the project’s development. She described how low-fidelity prototyping was a useful tool in effectively communicating ideas and contributed to her sense of making forward progress. Corresponding author: Elizabeth Gerber [email protected]www.elsevier.com/locate/destud 0142-694X $ - see front matter Design Studies -- (2011) --e-- doi:10.1016/j.destud.2011.06.005 1 Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Gerber, E., & Carroll, M., The psychological experience of prototyping, Design Studies (2011), doi:10.1016/j.destud.2011.06.005
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an early stage work practice for designers focused on capturing ideas and ob-
served the psychological experience of restructuring and combining mental
processes experienced while sketching. In addition to improving design results
and generating more divergent ideas, Dow and colleagues found that proto-
typing multiple prototypes in parallel leads increased self-efficacy beliefs
(Dow, Glassco, Kass, Schwarz, & Klemmer, 2011) whereas engaging in serial
critiques about prototypes often resulted in defensive postures (Dow, Glassco,
Kass, Schwarz, & Klemmer, 2009).
While these study begin to examine how people psychologically experience
design practices in the context of the design process, a full-cycle approach to
conducting organizational psychological research of design practices is
needed. Full-cycle research (Chatman & Flynn, 2005) initiates with observa-
tion of naturally occurring phenomena, followed by manipulation-based re-
search settings. Researchers travel back and forth between observation and
manipulation-based research to understand the conceptual underpinnings of
the phenomenon and generalizability of the results. This approach avoids
the vulnerabilities that occur from relying on a singular method.
With the increasing widespread adoption and proliferation of design practices
in non-traditional organizations such as management consulting firms and ed-
ucational institutions, design practices such as low-fidelity prototyping are
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under increased scrutiny by non-designers. Therefore, a more sophisticated
and empirically validated explanation for why a practice works, including
both anticipated and non-anticipated outcomes is needed. Design scholars
need to develop a comprehensive behavioral, cognitive, and emotional frame-
work for how design practices work. Further, this framework needs to be de-
veloped independently of the high-profile design consultancies who support
the development of teams such as the Green Team. Evaluation of the practices
needs to be separated from the evaluation of the consultancy brand. Not only
was the Green Team learning a new practice, they were also benefitting from
the investment, attention and support from the consultants which likely influ-
enced their perceived competence. Understanding the psychological experi-
ence of one popular practice, low-fidelity prototyping, is a critical first step
to developing an interdisciplinary framework of enacting design practices in
a complex setting.
Over the last twenty years, creativity scholars have sought to identify and
understand the individual, group, and organizational characteristics that en-
hance and inhibit success creativity in complex social systems (Amabile,
1996; Ford, 1996; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). By studying the orga-
nizational context of creative work, their research has elucidated ways in
which managers can support creative and innovative outcomes for their orga-
nizations. This study is an initial effort to understand how design practices in-
fluence work experiences and outcomes in a complex organizational setting. It
is not enough to know that a design practice works, but it is also important to
examine how it interacts with factors such as individual behavior, ability, per-
sonality, knowledge, group composition, characteristics, and organizational
culture.
In the past design scholars have used a psychological lens to understand and
explain how people’s everyday behaviors and emotions influences interactions
with designed objects (Norman, 1988, 2004). Applying this lens spawned the
creation of new designed objects. This study similarly employs a psychological
lens to understand the ways that people engage, enact, interact and create as
they use low-fidelity prototyping in the design process. It is important to
gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of how working with
uncertain outcomes effects practitioners engaging in this practice. The design
process requires one to stay in ambiguous spaces for extended periods of times
as designers question basic assumptions about how the world around them
works. Design work also requires that practitioners have a strong sense of
self and group efficacy to persist through the uncertainty of the design process.
These key factors are essential components that contribute to our understand-
ing of how design is practiced and may influence how design practices enhance
productive outcomes in the workplace.
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2011.06.005
The psychological experi
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This research study suggests that while the social setting and team structure
may influence the psychological experience, it alone does not provoke the psy-
chological experience. The team was expected to adopt the user centered de-
sign process, yet expectations for psychological outcomes such as reframing
failure, fostering a sense of progress and development of beliefs in creative
ability were not specified. The senior management mandate was that five
new products be released on the market, rather than that the team experience
psychological benefits. In fact, it is possible that the pressure from manage-
ment may have actually had the opposite effect e that of increased fear of fail-
ure, lack of forward progress, and insecurity about beliefs in creative ability as
the team did not launch a single product on the market during the period in
which they were to do so. Future empirical studies may explore the interaction
effect of low-fidelity practices and the psychological states induced in the con-
trolled laboratory studies to control for team structure and social setting.
5 Methodological challengesDespite systematic guidelines for evaluating qualitative data such as how to
gather, code, and analyze data, qualitative research is ill-suited for testing
the reliability, validity, and generalizability of the very insights it generates
(Yin, 1984). While qualitative case study research may be well-suited for build-
ing theory, it suffers from sampling error and investigator bias (Schein, 1987).
Though the researcher took copious notes when present, it was impossible to
capture all instances when the informants were enacting the work practices. In-
stead of collecting survey data from a large sample representative of all indi-
viduals enacting the HCD process, rich detailed descriptions of the
experience of enacting the work practices in a select case were collected. While
these rich descriptions are useful for developing interesting and detailed the-
ory, the descriptions are inherently biased by the researcher’s interpretations
of the data. As much as the researcher tried to follow Glaser and Strauss’
(1967) recommendations for data collection by writing down all observations
as objectively as possible, the researcher unconsciously influenced the data col-
lected by choosing to record some events and not others. Additionally, as dis-
crete as the researcher tried to be while collecting data, her mere presence likely
impacted the behavior of those observed and consequently the data that was
collected. This research highlights both the benefits and drawbacks of studying
work practices in organizational contexts. On the one hand, the researcher was
better able to understand the interaction of the individual psychological expe-
rience, social context, structure, and work practices, but on the other hand, it
was not easy to determine how to parse out the independent contributions of
each variable as may be possible in laboratory studies.
6 Implications for design managementThis research study suggests ways in which individuals can manage design
work in uncertain conditions. The design process, like other innovation pro-
cesses, does not systematically result in marketplace innovation, and when it
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does, this feedback comes long after the design process has been enacted.
Although employees may initially be persuaded to pursue an innovation pro-
cess because of successful implementation of the process in other organizations
and interest in doing “something new”, this motivation may not be sustainable
(Abrahamson, 1996). Over time, employees may express uncertainty about the
effectiveness of the innovation process if they do not benefit from the day-to-
day enactment of their work practices. As first intimated by Hackman and
Oldman’s work on job redesign (1980), managers may actively design em-
ployee work experiences by using behavioral science theory to evoke cognitive,
emotional, and behavioral reactions from employees. Low-fidelity prototyp-
ing is an important and useful work practice that delivers immediate feedback
about work effort to employees who are tackling challenges with great uncer-
tainty. Increased feedback about work increases worker satisfaction and mo-
tivation, reducing likelihood for costly worker turnover (Hackman &Oldman,
1980). Managers may adopt and design work practices, such as low-fidelity
prototyping, to which employees are committed so they experience intermedi-
ate benefits before formal outcomes are realized. While adoption of such prac-
tices may initially face resistance due to barriers such as existing corporate
culture or the skills of the workforce, the appeal of the psychological out-
comes: reframing failure, fostering a sense of a sense of forward progress
and self-efficacy are broad and may potentially mitigate resistance. More
research is needed to understand the psychological experience of the practices
across cultures.
7 ConclusionThis study is undergirded with a theoretical framework that supports the no-
tion that design is a learning process (Beckman & Barry, 2007; Fong, 2003;
Owen, 1998). People construct knowledge in varied ways as they engage in de-
sign processes. Kolb’s experiential learning theory (1984) describes how
knowledge is created through experiences. It is critical for both researchers
and practitioners to understand how design work practices influence the enact-
ment of design work. Although researchers describe how design work practices
support the construction of new knowledge, few studies consider how people
psychologically experience the construction of knowledge while enacting de-
sign work practices.
The practice of low-fidelity prototyping not only influences work outcomes,
but also the way people feel about the work. This practice led to reframing fail-
ure as an opportunity for learning, fostering a sense of a sense of forward prog-
ress, and strengthening beliefs about creative ability Applying a psychological
lens to work practices will continue to reveal new and more nuanced under-
standings of how designers work to create impactful change and drive
innovation.
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2011.06.005
The psychological experi
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(2011), doi:10.1016/j.destud.
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