Participants are recruited to participants in small group sessions (4‐8 participants) in which they complete exercises designed to help them express their cognitive, emotional, aspirational, and procedural ideas and issues. Often, materials are provided to allow participants to diagram and design ideal product experiences. We find that the act of physically laying out words and images and the choice placement in a diagram enables participants to articulate their ideas more thoroughly than they can in a typical interview or conversation.

It should be noted that participant designs are used as an explanatory vehicle for their needs, not as actual design specifications.