On Being Cool – Exploring Interaction Design for Teenagers

This paper describes a suite of studies that investigated ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. Beginning with a hierarchy of cool that situated cool across three dimensions of having, doing, and being cool, the studies reported here are described in terms of their findings and the extent to which they confirm the model. The contribution, and potential, of the different methods used, in terms of their ability to describe aspects of the model and the insights gained from the findings, are discussed The work demonstrates that the model was indeed appropriate, and the combination of methods described here goes a considerable distance towards covering the exploration of the design space. For the current construction of cool, a set of key aspects for its design is presented and these concepts are demonstrated in a small example. In terms of understanding cool, it is evident that this is a complex design space; one surprising aspect of the work is an understanding of how to avoid the design of uncool.