Designing4Kids' Experience with Bodystorming

This week saw our team using bodystorming to present one of our concepts in Thursday's workshop. It was definitely an interesting experience (to say the least), but I think it helped us to consider a number of issues/problems with the design of some of our concepts.

We initially had three different concepts we were considering for the bodystorm: Grid It, Asobu Box, and Barnyard Bounce. Since we haven't gone through a specific concept selection process yet, we decided to quickly chart the concepts against a number of different factors to help us decide on an appropriate concept to present (e.g. How easily can we bodystorm it? What materials/props do we need to aid us?)

At the end of this however, we still remained a little undecided over which concept to choose. We decided to quickly bodystorm through all three, as we had props for both Barnyard Bounce and Asobu Box already made. Grid It just required some tape.

Props for Asobu Box 

Props for Asobu Box

Props for Barnyard Bounce

Although we started off intending to quickly bodystorm each concept just as a way to choose a concept to present, going through each in this way helped to flag a couple of additional issues we probably would have overlooked. Ultimately (and rather ironically), I think our indecision over which concept to brainstorm helped us to refine a greater range of ideas even more than we would have otherwise done. Some of the concepts were ones which we hadn't revisited in a while, and having to go back to them by acting them out tested how self-explanatory some of them were/were not.

Alongside this, I am currently reading a handbook called 'Universal Methods of Design' - a sort of reference book that summarises 100 commonly used research and design methods - and I came across a section on bodystorming. I thought it would be interesting to finish this post by using the information in this reference book to reflect on how we can further use the bodystorming activity to develop our concepts, and where it sits within the design process.

The section describes bodystorming as:

"...physical brainstorming [emphasis mine] - dynamic, experiential, and generative - situated in methods of informance...combining active role-play with simple prototypes."

The book situates bodystorming as part of "Stage 3" of the design process (Concept Generation and Early Prototype Iteration), and describes it as a 'generative' activity opposed to more exploratory or evaluative design activities. An interesting point the book raised in relation to this, is that unlike traditional role-playing activities which encourage empathy with the user by putting yourself in their shoes, bodystorming is more about encouraging active design ideation, concept generation and potentially testing of these ideas. The latter part of this definitely happened during our bodystorming process - we encountered a number of problems as we acted out each concept, which required us to alter the concept and re-bodystorm it, which led to another problem that required altering, and so on and so forth.

The section finishes by describing "well-executed" bodystorming as:

"[capturing] a realistic scenario of use through immersive acting in a simulated context, and the process is seamlessly empathic."

Building on all of these things, there are a couple of points our team can consider as we move forward into the refining, testing and evaluation stages of the design process.

•  Although we had to keep making changes to our concept and starting over every time we acted them out, this is part and parcel of generating ideas, and to an extent we should encourage going over some of our older ideas using a different lens/activity (i.e. not just discussing them, but acting them out etc).
• We need to continue to situate our designs (and redesigns) within a context of use, and then use activities like bodystorming to test out the feasibility of these scenarios.

Other outputs generated from the process:

• Discussed the possibility of organising a group outing to actually try out our concept on a trampoline, as a way to test out the safety of the product. This way we can answer back something concrete when anyone questions us on the safety of our Barnyard Bounce concept in the future.