EXPLORING USER EXPERIENCE?
SNAPSHOT MATRIX FOR DESIGN CONCEPT GENERATION

How to explore user experience is a challenging issue, especially for generating new design concepts for future. Conventional techniques of future studies involve identifying key design drivers, conducting cross-impact analysis and reaching polarized scenarios. Scenario building is a widely used method to explore the dynamic relationship of user-product interaction and to address user experience in context. Future scenarios need to take into account a wide range of issues or possibilities that may bring about various situations, interactions and contexts.

This paper introduces the snapshot matrix technique based on scenario building methodology.  The technique supports the generation of a variety of ideas as snapshots through a systematic evaluation of the interaction among dimensions and themes of a future scenario. User experience is further explored by carrying out successive tasks to develop the idea in each snapshot. This method has been developed for an educational project which sought new design concepts for future bathrooms in terms of user experience. The nine-week project involved 27 senior year industrial design students who worked in groups of three or four. A major sanitary ware producer supported the project and provided information concerning the trends, and the local and export markets.

The project consisted of the following stages: (a) Brief: Formulation of key dimensions and critical themes which led to a core scenario. (b) Research: Mood boards and user interviews in context that helped students to get familiar with the scope of the project and the state of the art. (c) Idea generation: Filling in the snapshot matrix and carrying out successive tasks to explore the ideas. (d) Concept design: Evaluation and selection of concepts to form a portfolio of concepts.

The paper evaluates the final concept designs for future bathrooms, discusses the pros and cons of snapshot matrix for exploring user experience, and offers suggestions for further developing the technique.