Abstract:

Designers and users are inextricably related in regard of both the design process and the design output. Designers, and especially architects, have major impacts on the quality of the built environment, i.e. on the quality of life of many people. Designed artifacts, on the other hand, are meaningless unless endorsed by end-users, in power of taking ownership or rejecting these artifacts [1; 2]. Moreover, it is nowadays widely accepted that users “own the factual problem” [3], in other words are experts of their own personal experiences and issues associated with their personal situation. If the intertwined relationship between designers and users itself constitutes a crucial part of the design process, involving users into the design process becomes even more crucial to the project success [4-7]. The traditional model of architectural design seen as the result of a sole Master’s artful persuasion [8] is therefore completely outdated and no longer practicable [9-11], especially in view of users’ current willingness to integrate the process.

Considering this shift of practice, architectural studios designed for advanced Master students have implemented numerous strategies to keep end-users at the core of the designed project, and to support the students through the process of learning how to design with an eye for end-users. Among those strategies, face-to-face encounters with (even a small) sample of potential end-users (generally during the site visit or during the early phases of the design process) revealed as a powerful way for students to open to end-users’ perspectives and needs.

Unfortunately, the covid19 crisis made such encounters impossible during the 2020-21 academic year. In such impoverished pedagogical context, how could students still design for the “absent user” during their distant sessions of architectural studios? Our paper will relate an experimental setting developed to help Master students in architectural engineering re-connect with end-users, even in the absence of such end-users. Four well-known user-centric design tools have been tested (users’ driven brainstorming; personas; users’ journeys and ideation cards) and their uses and added values have been captured through students’ in-depth interviews and in-situ observations of the pedagogical setting. The results reveal how the tools can act in complementary ways to re-create some of the lost link, as well as a sense of coherence throughout the design process. Interestingly, the tools even created some link beyond the early phases of the design process, i.e. beyond the temporality where face-to-face meetings traditionally occurred in non-distant settings. The paper will also discuss the limits associated with the integration of fictional, fragmented views of absent end-users, and will open perspectives for the next-generation studio, offering insights into how such tools, originally attempting to fill a void, could actually in the future complement face-to-face, ephemeral end-users’ encounters.

References (full references available in full paper):
[1] Siva & London, 2011
[2] Biau, Fenker & Macaire, 2012
[3] Reymen, Dorst and Smulders, 2009
[4] Lawson, 2005
[5] le Maire, 2005
[6] Estevez & Léglise, 2015
[7] Sarkar & Gero, 2017
[8] Prost & Chaslin, 2014
[9] Albrecht, 1988
[10] Macaire, 2009
[11] McDonnell & Lloyd, 2014

Keywords:

User-centred design, distant architectural studios, user-centred tools.