UX Lecture: Probing futures - co-designing change for tomorrow

Description

On behalf of the Amsterdam UX meet-up group we organize 4 meetings a year where we bring recent academic research to the professional practice.

For this talk on 19 March we invited recent PhD Caroline Maessen:
In order to properly design for a better future, we need to start with acknowledging and potentially changing sticky patterns in the now. Otherwise, current problems will just be copied into the new designs. Future Probing is a disruptive design method that can make participants uncomfortable but will decidedly shake things up. The experiences can make them change their perspective on their complex problem and open their minds to solutions that facilitate real change.

Here is an example of a problem Future Probing could help you to solve. A company wanted a digital workflow to better monitor the annual employee review process, because the current process generated distrust among the employees who felt they had no say in matters. The design team mapped the current process and pain points and translated their insights into a digital tool that distributed control among the stakeholders. Soon, however, the tool was generating the exact same unease: both managers and employees had either found work-arounds that allowed them to perpetuate their earlier behavior or were resisting the tool. People do not necessarily like change, even though they say they do.

Future probing is not a technique for the weak of heart, you will have to deal with participants' sometimes strong emotions. Caroline Maessen has studied the method and experimented with it and is here to share her experiences.

SPEAKER
Caroline Maessen is a senior researcher at HU University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht at the Co-Design Research Group. She recently defended her PhD-thesis on Future Probing in complex problem situations, and how to change current patterns in order to

Periode	19 mrt. 2025
Mate van erkenning	Regional