Abstract
Extreme-user experiences have a unique potential to enhance designer creativity by altering one’s perception of their own designs. This shift in perception is achieved by incorporating the perspectives of extreme-users who experience the latent unmet needs among the rest of the population and have the potential to inspire design professionals. Works in the past have observed this potential (as the extreme-users) among the older adult users and users with reduced physical or cognitive abilities for the products, services, or systems (PSSs) that primarily target the mainstream general population users. While simulated experiences that emulate reduced physical and cognitive abilities are adopted to improve designers’ understanding of the needs among such extreme-users, they are seldom applied beyond the realms of assistive and inclusive design solutions, especially as a tool for design creativity. Therefore, there is an opportunity to advance creativity in mainstream PSSs design by systemic adoption of extreme-user experiences. In this thesis, we empirically test the underpinnings of extreme-user experiences and simulated extreme-user experiences for design creativity. We also analyse the necessity and impact of a systematic guided approach using extreme-user inspired design methods that inform designers of the experiences that would enhance the usability of their PSSs design. We finally present a framework that proposes four stages that one could adopt to design with extreme-user experiences. Additionally, we discuss the interactions between the Design Innovation (DI) process model and the proposed Extreme-user Experience Design Framework with which we aim to stretch the frontiers of the mainstream design process.