Antti Oulasvirta, Esko Kurvinen, Tomi Kankainen (2003). "Understanding contexts by being there: case studies in bodystorming”

About the Text

The text is about the benefits of a method called bodystorming. It’s meant to do design sessions in the original context rather than in the office.

Different stages

Bodystorming contains three different stages:

1. Observation of user activities
2. Documentation of the observations
3. Design based on the documentation

Bodystorming

Before you start with bodystorming first an observation and documentation is made.

Out of this base easy readable design questions will be asked.

The authors argue, that bodystorming can reduce the amount of time needed to study documents where users got observed.

Example

There was a case described, where they researched about passenger needs for a new rail service by role-playing during a real train journey. Scenes were introduces with cards instead of buying expensive props and it still worked out. Of course they wrote down important findings.

Seven habits for successful brainstorming