Articles

Mapping Social Design & Research Practice - Beyond the Toolkit:

  • an interesting article that also contains links to many design kit examples
  • contains a good list of questions toward the end of the article, and some good discussion in the comments
  • http://mappingsocialdesign.org/2013/11/19/mapping-social-design-practice-beyond-the-toolkit/
  • "...artist/musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies card deck. ...  prefigures many of today’s design card decks as a materialised way to engage people in doing and thinking differently."
  • "They disrupt the authority of the heroic individual designer, and aim to make available a designerly intention, or work practice and ways of going about things to change a current situation. It’s not clear, however, to what extent this is achieved in today’s social design toolkits, or whether indeed it is even possible."
    • note: we're not saying everyone and anyone should do design, we are saying that the things that get designed and built should be flexible and configurable to allow users a degree of autonomy over the tools they use ?
  • "what if the problem is not lack of designerly skill and intention (in "non-designers"), but a lack of ability (in "designers") to truly engage with social worlds because you have never been trained to think beyond your habitual ways of thinking?...those (toolkits) I have seen share a common concern with 'making complex things easier to understand'… when in fact the aim really ought to be 'making it possible to embrace complex things'. "

Design Guides

Diversity Through Inclusive Practice - FemNorthNet & DAWN Canada (pdf)

Children's Design Guide https://childrensdesignguide.org/

Circular Design Guide: http://circulardesignguide.com/methods

Method Cards and Design Kits

Common Features:

  • step-by-step design exercises (brainstorming, prototyping etc)
  • method cards (one method per card)

simplicity (information broken up into small, easier-to-consume chunks)

  • often broken down into phases of design process. e.g.
    •  discover/decide/make/validate (18F method cards), or 
    • orient/frame/ideate/iterate/optimize (Microsoft ID Toolkit), or 
    • manage/explore/create/evaluate (Cambridge ID Toolkit)


Work in Culture - Inclusive HR Toolkit 

https://www.workinculture.ca/Resources/Inclusion-in-the-Creative-Workplace/Inclusive-HR-Toolkit


Portland Community College Accessibility Handbook:

http://www.pcc.edu/resources/instructional-support/access/handbook.html


Tiltfactor - Buffalo matching game

http://www.tiltfactor.org/game/buffalo/


BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit:

http://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/

What we like:

  • associates techniques with specific personas ("Who are you doing this for?")
    • note: we want to be sure to convey that following our guidelines will make content more useable for all
  • provides definitions of terms (captions, transcripts etc)
  • "Before you begin" questions - considerations for existing content
    • note: we probably want to cover guidelines for both authoring ("ground-up") and "fixes" for existing content


IDEO Field Guide to Human-Centred Design:

https://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/

IDEO Design Kit:

http://www.designkit.org/

IDEO Design Kit Methods:

http://www.designkit.org/methods


What we like:

  • simple, clean and fun design


Center for Civic Design - Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent

http://civicdesign.org/fieldguides/

  • What we like:
    • small "bites" of information, presented in a simple format
    • guidelines are broken down into two levels of categories - Volumes (8) and Numbers (10)
      • each booklet is one of ten volumes ("Vol. 01 Designing usable ballots", "Vol. 08 Guiding voters through the polling place"), each volume containing 10 numbered guidelines ("No. 01 Use lowercase letters.", "No. 08 Use informational icons (only).)"
      • related volumes are indicated at the beginning of the booklet
    • each volume has same brief intro structure for consistency
      • "About the Field Guide Series" (same info in each volume) 
      • "About this Field Guide" (a summary that is specific to each volume), and 
      • a section describing the motivation or goal or a related topic (specific to each volume)
    • before and after examples
    • physical booklets are small and easy to handle/flip through
    • "Tip" checklist at the end of each volume

Usability Matters - Service Design Field Guide:

About - http://www.usabilitymatters.com/service-design-heuristics-field-guide/

Guide - http://www.usabilitymatters.com/_resources/usability_matters-service_design_field_guide.pdf

  • What we like:
    • useful exercises for designing services / for service providers - need to include service-related content for P4A? refer to this guide?
    • clean and simple design
    • glossary of terms

Universal Design for Learning Guidelines:

http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/downloads


University of Cambridge - Inclusive Design Toolkit:

http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/betterdesign2/


Frog Collective Action Toolkit:

http://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit.html


18F Method Cards:

https://methods.18f.gov/  Discover/Decide/Make/Validate

https://github.com/18F/methods

  • What we like:
    • concrete, practical and clear step-by-step exercises
    • time required indicators rated as small/medium/large - simple and quick way to estimate time commitment to each exercise
    • "Reasons to use it" defined briefly for each method

  

The Microsoft Design Tool Kit - Manual and Activities:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/practice


The Artefact Behaviour Change Strategy Cards:

https://www.artefactgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Behavior-Change-Strategy-Cards-with-Dividers-Feb-2014.pdf


FastCo Design - Boardgame for Kids:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053212/design-thinking-comes-to-kids-in-this-cute-board-game

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