Browsing by Subject "digital design"

Rapid development of ICT has brought it into nearly all areas of everyday living, including craft. Therefore, to retain the unique nature of craft, deep understanding is needed on how use of ICT affects craft, especially craft-design that is the sole basis of craft. In addition, it's also vital to assess the quality of the digital design tools. Little is known about ICT usage's effects on the craft-design process nor about usability of digital design tools meant for craft design. This research had three main objectives: to study usability of applications, meant for craft-design and find the best suited applications for craft-science students to use in their studies, to analyze and describe how using the applications affect students' craft-design processes and to develop and evaluate the performance of a remote evaluation method to study the two previous aspects. This research is a qualitative case study. Five applications were tested by eight participants. To enable authentic real life working environment and style for the participants and to gather research data remotely a remote multi-method was designed for data gathering of this re-search that included questionnaire-, written- and screen events video data. The main data analysis followed the procedures of qualitative content analysis. Usability of the five applications varied from very bad to excellent. Based on the overall usability, the applications that are most advisable for craft-design studies, from the five applications evaluated in this research are iWeaveIt and StitchSketch. Analysis of effects of application usage to participants' craft-design processes revealed three factors that promote changes: usability of the applications, new possibilities and limitations compared to traditional design methods and technical expertise of a designer. Reinterpretations and further development of ideas during the design process was observed in this research, while the participants were using the applications that were evaluated as good or excellent in terms of usability that contradicts with the findings of previous studies. The remote multi-method developed for this research fulfilled the main goals set for it. It gave the participants a possibility to work in their natural working environment without time or place limitations and it still produced rich attitudinal and behavioral data.