Technology-enhanced embodied prototyping

Documenting and experimenting with services that are experienced subjectively is challenging. Therefore, methods that allow for understanding of user experiences and support prototyping new ideas and concepts can support the development and evaluation of the service offerings. ‘Thinking with hands’ is a regularly used metaphor in service design. This points to something fundamental for designers, namely that the lived body is the ground of human thinking. Embodied prototyping is a way for a designer to get closer to the experience of people involved in a service encounter. Embodied design methods are defined as methods that require bodily involvement of designers and other participants in the process in the given tasks and activities. Some examples of embodied designer methods include bodystorming, role-play and service enactment.

When considering services that include digital interfaces, it is important to include the nature of those interaction in the embodied prototyping. Technologies people use in their everyday activities fundamentally shape how those activities might be done, and it is thus critical for designers and participants to understand those practices. Nevertheless, many service encounters can be prototyped through embodied methods with light-weight technology involvement. Technological tools that help designers to set the service scape and mimic service interactions can add high value to service design process already in the early phase.

Embodied design methods are instrumental in understanding the interactions and proving the value of the service from a customer perspective. In this session, we will give you examples on how tools such as DALL-E, ChatGPT and Imaginary Soundscape can bring a new dimension and an enhanced layer on embodied prototyping of services.