Lights, Camera, Action: Using animations to co-evaluate user experience scenarios

Scenarios are considered a useful tool for designers and HCI communities to generate detailed problem descriptions, future predictions, concept generations, requirements analysis and detailed system design surrounding a design problem. However, little is known about animated scenarios as a tool to co-evaluate and further explore early user research insights and themes with end users. In this study, previous research findings and insights concerning emergency alarm pendants were designed and presented as animated scenarios to older participants in a workshop. Emergency alarms are wearable product technologies that allow the user to alert designated contacts in the event of falls or medical emergencies and were chosen as a case study for this paper. The findings indicate, that while the animated scenarios provide a basis for participants to describe problems associated with using the emergency alarm technology, participants also used the animated scenarios to discus and evaluate the key emotions and themes that were presented. We refer to this process as co-evaluate. It is argued that animated scenarios can be used to validate the HCI designers' understanding and interpretation of early user research insights and themes.