Click the images below to download or find the publications.

Over the years, we have published materials from courses, symposia, workshops, theses, and books. Here is an overview. Descriptions will appear if you hover over them; if you click them, you’ll find out more.

Books and Theses

Four monographs have been published on major research projects about contextmapping. Convivial Toolbox (by Liz Sanders & P.J. Stappers) is a textbook for students, practitioners, that gives basic theory, instruction and case histories on generative techniques, contextmapping, and user research in general. The other three are PhD theses from ID-StudioLab, deepening specific issues. Bringing the everyday life of people into design (by Froukje Sleeswijk Visser) focuses on communicating UX insights to design teams in industry; Creating Socionas (by Carolien Postma) highlights how we can design for the social relations people have, and Meaningful Encounters (by Helma van Rijn) treats methods for designers to learn about and from difficult-to-reach users, such as children with autism.

   

Symposia

These two symposia report presentations by international authors and workshops with practitioners and academics about design research in general and user research in particular. Below on this page there are per-chapter listings.

 

Course reports

The courses RichViz!, RichInsights!, Contextmapping Skills, and several contextmapping masterclasses were accompanied by reports, each containing an outline of the method, reports from specific case studies by students, and pointers to the research. Below on this page there are per-chapter listings.

   

In detail

Design and the Growth of Knowledge

The symposium (2005) dealt with how design research is conducted, and the difficulties of implementing it in the pressures of industrial practice. It has presentations by Brenda Laurel (chapter 3), Gillian Crampton-Smith (chapter 4), and Kun-Pyo Lee (chapter 5), and an afterword by John Thackara, who moderated the symposium. In the workshop chapter, Carolien Postma reports on the discussions with design managers and design consultants on the barriers and enablers of doing research within an design project in industry.

The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

       

Designing for, with, and from user experiences

The symposium celebrates five years of contextmapping research at TU Delft. Speakers are Liz Sanders (chapter 1), Jacob Buur (chapter 2), and Froukje Sleeswijk Visser (chapter 3), and twenty brief CV’s of TU Delft alumni who were in the forefront of contextmapping education, and applied the techniques afterward in their jobs. In the entire report (not as separate pdfs below) there are 10 two-page summaries of tie-in workshops on ‘involving users in design’.

The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

     

Rich Viz! (2005)

RichViz! was an elective course focusing on methods and media to convey findings from user studies. This project was conducted in collaboration with Philips Design. The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

  

Rich Insights (in Dutch, 2009)

In the Rich Insights course, groups of design students carry out a contextmapping study for an industrial company. The first edition was in Dutch only.

The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

     

Rich Insights (2010)

In the Rich Insights course, groups of design students carry out a contextmapping study for an industrial company. The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

          

Contextmapping & Experience Design (2008)

This coursebook accompanied the ‘contextmapping Asia Tour’, in which we did workshops and classes with design practitioners and students in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. The first icon opens a pdf of the entire report; the others open a pdf of one chapter each.

  

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