Impact of user involvement on design students’ motivation and self-confidence

Involvement of users in the design process is generally viewed favourably, both within academia and industry. Their involvement can be seen as a strategy for designers to clarify their design task and reduce uncertainties in the design process. Simultaneously, there is a lack of understanding about the impact that user involvement has on students and how they experience doing so. This paper reports on a study where students were asked to self-report their motivation and self-confidence throughout a design exercise, stretching 11 days, with surveys repeating daily. Additionally, students were asked to indicate which-if any-strategies of user involvement they used every day. We find that students self-reported motivation did not change statistically significantly, while self-confidence did change. However, in neither case did student's involvement of end-users impact how motivated or self-confident they were. We discuss our results in relation to existing research on method use in general and user involvement in particular and conclude with some suggestions for future work.Involvement of users in the design process is generally viewed favourably, both within academia and industry. Their involvement can be seen as a strategy for designers to clarify their design task and reduce uncertainties in the design process. Simultaneously, there is a lack of understanding about the impact that user involvement has on students and how they experience doing so. This paper reports on a study where students were asked to self-report their motivation and self-confidence throughout a design exercise, stretching 11 days, with surveys repeating daily. Additionally, students were asked to indicate which-if any-strategies of user involvement they used every day. We find that students self-reported motivation did not change statistically significantly, while self-confidence did change. However, in neither case did student's involvement of end-users impact how motivated or self-confident they were. We discuss our results in relation to existing research on method use in general and user involvement in particular and conclude with some suggestions for future work.A