Transfer scenarios: Grounding innovation with marginal practices

Transfer scenarios is a method developed to support the design of innovative interactive technology. Such a method should help the designer to come up with inventive ideas, and at the same time provide grounding in real human needs. In transfer scenarios, we use marginal practices to encourage a changed mindset throughout the design process. A marginal practice consists of individuals who share an activity that they find meaningful. We regard these individuals not as end-users, but as valuable input in the design process. We applied this method when designing novel applications for autonomous embodied agents, e.g. robots. Owners of unusual pets, such as snakes and spiders, were interviewed - not with the intention to design robot pets, but to determine underlying needs and interests of their practice. The results were then used to design a set of applications for more general users, including a dynamic living-room wall and a set of communicating hobby robots.