User-Centred Design Methods and Applications

Working with stakeholders is fundamental to highlight the barriers and anxieties related to everyday lived experiences and informs the core aspects of technical requirements as well as non-functional requirements. Not going through co-production processes, and not addressing the emerging issues is what usually results in risk of failure of deployment and adoption of the technology.

Our User-Centred Design (UCD) method takes the form of open participatory action research adopted as part of a ‘living lab’ framework. We are skilled at running focus groups comprising of patients, carers, users, clinicians where we discuss concerns for each project from a pro-design and innovation level. 

Given our extensive experience of mixed-method design approaches, we draw on a large toolkit of techniques to ensure eliciting, capturing and translating stakeholder input into innovative and acceptable design solutions and evaluation criteria.

We run activities such as embodiment workshops[i], and SOMA design[ii] workshops to facilitate creative ideation, cultural probes to generate deeper user insights into lived experiences[iii].

As part of our feasibility studies we use of Design Cards as a key tool for engaging with a range of stakeholders, bring on board significant experience with designing card decks and developed the “Cardographer” platform to facilitate new data driven insights into the design and development process[iv].

[i] Caleb-Solly, P., Dogramadzi, S., Ellender, D., Fear, T. and van den Heuvel, H., 2014, March. A Mixed-Method Approach to Evoke Creative and Holistic Thinking about Robots in a Home Environment. In 2014 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 374-381). IEEE.

[ii] Höök, K., Benford, S., Tennent, P., Tsaknaki, V., Alfaras, M., Avila, J.M., Li, C., Marshall, J., Roquet, C.D., Sanches, P. and Ståhl, A., 2021. Unpacking Non-Dualistic Design: The Soma Design Case. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 28(6), pp.1-36.

[iii] Caleb-Solly, P., Flind, A. and Vargheese, J.P., 2011, June. Cameras as cultural probes in requirements gathering—Exploring their potential in supporting the design of assistive technology. In 2011 24th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

[iv] Darzentas, D., Cameron, H., Wagner, H., Craigon, P., Bodiaj, E., Spence, J., Tennet, P., & Benford, S. (2022). Data-inspired co-design for museum and gallery visitor experiences. AI EDAM, 36.

Research Topics

• Methods for inclusive design

• Using Soma Design to ideate new robots embodiments

• Interactive evolutionary design to explore new technology design spaces

Related Research Projects

• Emergence - Tackling Frailty: Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service

The network will create, foster and facilitate co-designed, co-delivered and impactful research to accelerate the realisation of healthcare robots as pragmatic and sustainable solutions for personalised, affordable and inclusive assessment, self-management and reduction of frailty.

Project Lead: Praminda Caleb-Solly

Related Research Publications

• Camilleri, A., Dogramadzi, S. and Caleb-Solly, P., 2022, March. Learning from Carers to inform the Design of Safe Physically Assistive Robots-Insights from a Focus Group Study. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 703-707). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3523760.3523859

• Gupta, P., McClatchey, R. and Caleb-Solly, P., 2021, June. Intelligent IoT System Requirements to Support Self-Management for People with Learning Disabilities–A Study with Care Providers. In 2021 17th International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE) (pp. 1-8). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9486621

• Winkle, K., Caleb-Solly, P., Turton, A. and Bremner, P., 2020. Mutual shaping in the design of socially assistive robots: A case study on social robots for therapy. International Journal of Social Robotics, 12(4), pp.847-866. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-019-00536-9

• Van Maris, A., Zook, N., Caleb-Solly, P., Studley, M., Winfield, A. and Dogramadzi, S., 2020. Designing ethical social robots—a longitudinal field study with older adults. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 7, p.1. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2020.00001/full

• Winkle, K., Lemaignan, S., Caleb-Solly, P., Bremner, P., Turton, A.J. and Leonards, U., 2020. In-Situ Learning from a Domain Expert for Real World Socially Assistive Robot Deployment. In Robotics: Science and Systems. http://roboticsproceedings.org/rss16/p059.pdf

• Winkle, K., Caleb-Solly, P., Turton, A. and Bremner, P., 2018, March. Social robots for engagement in rehabilitative therapies: Design implications from a study with therapists. In 2018 13th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 289-297). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9473863 

• Lyons, Z., Barak, O., Caleb-Solly, P., Harris, N., O'Neill, B., da Silva Ramos, S. and Watts, L., 2015. Establishing design requirements for a virtual therapy aid for executive dysfunction. In The 2015 International Conference on Brain Informatics and Health. https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/establishing-design-requirements-for-a-virtual-therapy-aid-for-ex 

• Topham, P., Caleb-Solly, P., Matthews, P., Farmer, A. and Mash, C., 2015, August. Mental health app design: A journey from concept to completion. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services adjunct (pp. 582-591). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2786567.2787136 

• Caleb-Solly, P., Dogramadzi, S., Ellender, D., Fear, T. and Heuvel, H.V.D., 2014, March. A mixed-method approach to evoke creative and holistic thinking about robots in a home environment. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction (pp. 374-381). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2559636.2559681

• Caleb-Solly, P., Flind, A. and Vargheese, J.P., 2011, June. Cameras as cultural probes in requirements gathering—Exploring their potential in supporting the design of assistive technology. In 2011 24th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5999158