Design Research 2019

Human experience is naturally influenced by their social circles; people talk to others and see others behave.

The social circles have a deep and strong effect on how they themselves experience things.

• Introduce a sociological theory - symbolic interactionism: Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they give to those things, yet the meanings are derived from the social interaction that one has with others and the society.
• Imagine a typical day of a design researcher: they study how users use products (physical/digital/services) to make the painpoints explicit, for saving budget and time, they do research in a lab; or if better, in a generous timeframe, they go out, interact with users and observe how they might use the products in the context.
• But still, we can only find out a tip of the iceberg of how users experience the products because USERS LIVE IN THEIR SOCIAL NETWORK, NOT OUR PRODUCT! The way they experience our product but this time could be changed by their social environment
• Example: Chinese Millennial study
  Experience with Wechat Money transfer - Firstly it's only for transfer money among wechat friends, pretty much like bank transfer, but it becomes social games when they use it with friends – it became a game of catching the money as quick as possible, otherwise the money will be gone. The experience of using the product has been changed in social interaction.