I undertake applied research in educational product development from the perspectives of interaction design, visual design, and human-centered product development (also called design thinking), through the application of the Bridging Design Prototype™ approach. My doctoral project titled “Issues in Preschool Concept Mapping: An Interaction Design Perspective” included the development of this approach. A BDP facilitated the process of gaining early entry to difficult to access and technologically disinclined user communities.
The BDP approach strengthens the role of design in business by enabling small organisations with limited budgets, incomplete or non-ideal R&D teams to undertake design thinking in early product development. User communities accept to incorporate a BDP into their real activities, while a designer or R&D team uses it for learning about the community, the context, the practice. BDPs can be considered experience prototypes and provotypes. The main difference with these rapid prototypes is that BDPs must be fully functional rapid prototypes. Experimentation should not require the presence of a designer. By functional, it means that teachers, for example, must be able to use them in real activities, with their students. But, these are not necessarily minimum viable products, as the digital or tangible materials with which they are built could have a limited lifespan.
The BDP approach has been used to advance two applied design research lines.
Applied research line 1: BDPs in Design for Learning
In the area of “design for learning through Bridging Design Prototypes™”, studies and explorations with BDPs have been implemented to research issues in preschool concept mapping and how people study online. The concept research phase has been completed for implementing BDPs for improving algebraic skills in early primary education and enabling people with severe impairments to study online.
In early childhood education, the BDP for preschool concept mapping has been used for generative design as part of Gloria Gomez's PhD (Gomez, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2005)
In elementary school, a BDP for learning the multiplication tables has been used for making explorations with first graders, as part of Claudia Marin's Maestria en Diseño y Creación at La Universidad de Caldas
Background research for implementing BDPs on the transition of early algebra (inspired by FULCRUM) and gamification of assistive technologies (Contreras et al. 2019). These projects are paused at present.
Applied research line 2: Strengthening the role of design in small organisations with BDPs
The BDP approach has enabled my students as part of incomplete or non-ideal R&D teams to carry out a design thinking processes and somewhat structure design in the fuzzy-front end phase (ideation to proof of concepts) of new product development (Gomez et al. 2019).
Between 2014-16 at the Universiy of Sourthern Denmark, the following students developed BDPs for the welfare, energy, educational, leisure, and sporting industries as part of semester projects or master thesis projects. They prototyped for:
International students to navigate the Danish Society by Alexanda Rasmussen
Measuring and evaluating own food waste by Katrina Riber Hansen
Building healthy habits in children by Eva Hudakova
Climbers and athletes to train unilateral movement by Robert Hoppe
Teenage children and parents to talk about sexually transmitted diseases by Bjørn Clemensen
Investigating a student food delivery service by Casper Karlsmose Andersen
Investigating the relevance of implementing and app for collaborative games by Rafael Moreno Aranda
Career development skills by Magnus Vestergaard Laurse
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Gomez, G., Wilki Thygesen, M., Melson, A., Halkjær Petersen, M., Harlev, C., Rozsnyói, E., & Rubaek, T. A. (2020). Bridging design prototypes. In D. Gardiner & H. Reefke (Eds.), Operations management for business excellence: Building sustainable supply chains (4th ed.). Abingdon, England: Routledge.
