Discussion Tool
University of Technology
Together with Sophie Arends
As an SDL activity I have executed a concept deriving from the PhD research of Philemonne Jaasma and Evert Wolters. I collaborated with
another Final Bachelor student at the time, Sophie Arends
The tool
The tool which I worked on focuses on visualizing a discussion. It consists of a board with one discussion topic that is placed at the
middle of the board. Several smaller disks carry arguments of this discussion. These disks are dragged over the board throughout the
discussion according to its importance or connectivity to other arguments. When the discs are close to the middle they are being seen as
most important arguments. The direction we were exploring was how to implement this tool and how this could be used best by looking at what
target group we will focus on and what the aim of the discussion should be.
Firstly, 3 user tests were done with a paper prototype. Then the need raised for a more functional and physical tool. We built this tool
and did a contextual user test in which several stakeholders in a developing neighbourhood discussed their action plan on improvement
within the neighbourhood.
Conclusions
The tool mainly caused the participants to find new relations between arguments. It also prevents them to reiterate on the same argument
over and over again. According to the contextual user test several recommendations have been given on physical improvement of the tool.
