Appling Participatory Design to Develop the Concept of the Desks in the Small Bedroom

• Main Authors: Ying-chia Tang, 唐英嘉
• Other Authors: Yen-fu Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04974766925711750480

碩士 === 大同大學 === 工業設計學系(所) === 104 === Because of the influence of M-shaped Society in Taiwan, the size of the house in the city is becoming small. The Japanese scholar Akihiko Nishiyama stated that the desk is an important furniture to everyone so the design of the desk in the small bedroom is important. The concept of participatory design is to involve the users, designers, and researchers in the design process and all participants can express their ideas and opinions. This study applied the notion of participatory design to inquire the design process of the desk in the small bedroom. Japanese and Taiwanese have the same situation so this study separately invited the Taiwanese users in Taipei and the Japanese users in Kyoto to participate in the design activities. There were two parts in the design activities: the first part was focusing on the current situation of the user’s bedroom, and the second part was focusing on the expected situation of the user’s bedroom. The goal of the first part was to explore the users’ needs and behaviors when using the desk. The goal of the second part was to explore the users’ expectations for the desk. To achieve the goals, every user was provided a pen, a ruler, and paper in these two parts. Also, LEGO bricks as the design tool was provided in the second part so the users could present their expected furniture models. In the design activity, the Taiwanese users and the Japanese users presented similar and different behaviors. When combing the LEGO furniture models, all users had applied the proportioned LEGO doll to measure the suitable size of the furniture models. When expressing the ideas, the Taiwanese users and the Japanese adopted different approaches. The Taiwanese users expressed their ideas orally because they used native language. However, the Japanese users used their second language - English along with nonverbal ways to share their ideas. After the design activity, this study used the thematic analysis to summarize the common themes the users have provided the concept of their desk designs. The themes from the Taiwanese users were: ‘the storage of the desk’, ‘the area of the top of the desk’, and ‘the location of the desk.’ The themes from the Japanese users were: ‘the modular storage’, ‘adequate amount of light shone on top of the desk’, and ‘the different opportunities in using the desk.’ Through the event log, the common themes, and the users’ desk LEGO models, two design concepts were developed. To enquire whether the Taiwanese could accept the design ideas from the Japanese users, 54 Taiwanese who lived in small bedrooms were invited to evaluate the two design concepts. The result has no significant difference by using the chi-square test. It indicates that Taiwanese could accept the desk design concepts from the Taiwanese users and the Japanese users.