Facilitating redesign with design cards: experiences with novice designers

Abstract

While effort has been put into developing and evaluating usability evaluation methods less attention has been paid to shifting usability feedback into improved designs. We report from a study with 44 novice designers creating redesign suggestions. Some were provided with domain specific design cards to facilitate the redesign process. Design cards are physical cards used to structure a collaborative process, and providing design cues such as keywords and questions. Afterward, three developers assessed the quality of the suggestions. We found that the cards diversified the range of system aspects that novices considered, supported ideation, and kept the discussion going. However, the cards did not compensate the limited design experience, and the participants had challenges understanding the value of the cards, and implement them in the process. Having developers assessing the subjective quality of the suggestions turned out to be challenging due to low inter-rater reliability.