A Role-Based Prototyping Approach for Human-Centered Design in Industry

Abstract

In previous work, the so-called role-based prototyping approach (RBPA) was proposed. It is for interdisciplinary student teams and puts strong emphasis on autonomy and proactivity. Progress in the project is measured by the three lenses of human-centered design, feasibility, viability, and desirability. It guides the students on important aspects of fuzzy-front product development by providing a template of the overall process and specific tools, e.g., an adapted Kanban board. This approach was limited to academia. In this paper, an application of the RBPA in an industry setting is discussed. Industry settings are different from classical fuzzy-front end scenarios because a context is given. To address this, the roles of the proposed approach were refined by assigning specific tasks to incorporate customer requirements. The result was deployed in a university course where students were given design tasks from industry. Each team is guided through this process with the help of daily coaching sessions and their progress is tracked, recorded, and evaluated. The results are then discussed in detail with an outlook for the future.