Provoking Students to Re-story Stakeholders in their Design Process

It’s exceptionally challenging for novice designers to fully understand the stakeholders that are intrinsically part of their design process (and ultimately their target design). Research shows that student designers often think of the other people involved in their designs as ‘users’, and those users are generally mirrors of themselves. Expert designers, however, know that there are many relevant, interested and affected individuals, communities and groups involved in their design process, which naturally includes users but also includes other parties (e.g., funders, manufacturers, user/experts, target users, other designers). This paper highlights a project implemented in a design foundation studio course that provoked students to discover, define, acknowledge, and design with/for the breadth of stakeholders in their design process. The aim of the design project was to support the students to engage in human-centred designing); to build a more fulsome picture of a target design (in this case a board game for blind and sighted folks; to work with real stakeholders; to develop a detailed empathy and design research plan; and to story and re-story their design process through designing, making, deep reflection and meaningful conversations. The project involved a multi-staged process that began by facilitating students to make design inquiries with stakeholders from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), a blind user/expert, and a seasoned industrial designer. In the process of the project, the students developed skills that increased their ability to balance the needs of the various stakeholders involved in a project, to make meaningful decisions towards an interesting target design, and to engage in self-knowing and understanding their own role in the design process. This paper promises to illuminate interesting ways to provoke students to move beyond simply thinking of users, and instead to re-story stakeholders in their design process.