219 Towards a Design Space Explorer for Media Facades Peter Dalsgaard, Kim Halskov and Rune Nielsen Centre for Digital Urban Living and CAVI Aarhus University, Denmark dalsgaard@cavi.dk, halskov@CAVI.dk, rune@CAVI.dk, ABSTRACT Collaborative design projects are often complex affairs in which a number of resources, concerns, and sources of inspiration are brought into play in the shaping of future design concepts. This paper presents the Design Space Explorer, a framework for managing these multiple sources of information and domain concerns in collaborative design projects. The Design Space Explorer captures and gives an overview of design materials and forms, domain locations and situations, interaction styles, and content types. Furthermore, it provides a platform for designers to combine these aspects into scenarios for design concepts. We present and discuss the use of the Design Space Explorer in two specific design cases in the domain of interactive media façades, part of the emerging field of digital urban living. Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation. General Terms Design. Keywords Media façades, digital urban living, design space 1. INTRODUCTION The spread of digital technology into urban areas with social and cultural practices different from the ones known from the workplace setting, and with new kinds of spatial and material circumstances, challenges the way designers address domain concerns, as well as interaction forms. When designing for new settings, like urban areas, it is particularly crucial to get an overview of the key aspects of the design space, and how design moves in one area of the design space affect the potentials of other parts of the design space. In this paper, we focus on one particular kind of urban computing, Media façades, which is the general term for incorporating displays as an integrated part of a building’s façade [1]. In the beginning of the design process, a large quantity and variety of information is often identified as forming what may be called a design space, within which designers strive for an understanding of potential avenues to pursue in the course of the project. The design horizon may vary to a great degree across projects, depending on the frame and scope of the project, the kind of stakeholders involved, etc. In many innovative design projects, it is the case that the design horizon is very broad indeed, comprising a large number of concerns that the design team needs to overview and manage. In the case of multiple stakeholders being involved in the project, who need to align their understandings and efforts, this task can be more daunting still. The principal contribution of this paper is what we call a Design Space Explorer for media façades, which offers a systematic approach to identifying key aspects of media façades: material, form, location, situation, interaction, content, purpose, and experience. The Design Space Explorer is a tool which can help gain an overview of the design space, conceptualise key aspects of interaction design, and support communication and discussions among design team members, as well as facilitate communication with clients and other kinds of partners. Moreover, The Design Space Explorer provides a platform for combining these aspects into a use scenario. Figure 1 represents an extract of a Design Space Explorer, which consists of two parts: aspects listed in the top row and a number of options for each aspect, in the columns below. The presentation and discussion of the Design Space Explorer in this paper is part of our ongoing research in the area of supporting reflection on design processes. The current version of the Design Space Explorer is a paper- based tool, which obviously in a subsequent version could be implemented as software tool with flexible lists. The Design Space Explorer is related to, however not fully congruent with, the study and practice of design rationale, [11,14]. Horner & Atwood, [11], consider design rationale as a scaffolding for documenting and communicating the rationale underlying the design process and decisions made in that process. The objective of the Design Space Explorer is somewhat more modest in that the method does not necessarily capture all aspects of the design process (e.g. in the cases presented in this paper, we have not mapped out collaborative aspects), nor does it in itself explicate the reasoning and argumentation underlying specific design decisions. Such endeavours are complex and go beyond what can be captured in a schema as straightforward as the one we present. There are however numerous similarities between the Design Space Explorer and design rationale approaches, among these the structured overview of the design space, the possibility to investigate design alternatives, the documentation of the key facets of the design challenges, and last but not least the use of the tool as a vehicle for communication between designers and collaborators. Our approach to exploring the potential of the development of a Design Space Explorer for media façades has been one of conducting research through design [22], based on two design cases. The first case in which the Design Space Explorer was initially developed was the collaboration between interaction design researchers (the authors) at CAVI, and BIG OZCHI 2008, December 8-12, 2008, Cairns, QLD, Australia. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG. Additional copies can be ordered from CHISIG (secretary@chisig.org). OZCHI 2008 Proceedings ISBN: 0-9803063-4-5