PLATFORM------- Interactive (technology-enhanced) spaces are becoming omnipresent in our modern world. Designers and companies alike are learning that technology can change people?s impression of a sample of physical space in such a way that yields profit and creates meaning. In the business of designing interactive spaces, there is a dependency on experts to design and help realize these installations. The reliance is due to the many specialized and multidisciplinary skills required to create these interactive exhibitions, including industrial design, electrical and mechanical engineering, programming, and architecture. Industry tackles this problem by creating companies with mixtures of skilled people. In academia, experts with years of experience are assigned to groups of students. This project aims to create a tool to lower this dependency on experts. The tool aims to do this by sharing and restructuring information about design, engineering, and technology to make the design of well thought out interactive spaces more accessible to beginners. The tool is intended to be used both commercially within companies and academically among students across various design backgrounds. It is a go-to tool catering to both practical and academic needs in the process of creating interactive spaces, helping to guide and inspire beginners at the design table while also acting as a great general creativity tool for experts. The target users of the tool include: students in interactive technologies design courses entry-level product designers and interaction designers, entry-level architects and interior designers, and expert-level project managers (and designers). The purpose of the tool is not to replace experts, but to lower beginner?s reliance on these experts by giving them the tools to make some educated decisions in the first few phases of conceptualizing an interactive space before involving experts in later phases. ------- DESIGN BRIEF------- The design goal of this thesis project is to create a tangible manifestation of a toolkit through a four (4) cycle iterative embodiment development process that empowers inexperienced designers with the knowledge to create concepts for meaningful and creative interactive spaces. For further information on how we define interactive spaces or distinguish experts from beginners in this study, refer the project's use of terminology. Tangibility and accessibility are a few of the major design requirements for this project (see project's design requirements). The design required physical elements that were easy and inexpensive to acquire for users and easy to populate with new information, so materials used for the design consisted of papers, woods, acrylics, and compressed fibers, mostly materials that would allow users immediate access to the toolkit through a printer and a laser cutter. ------- DESIGN RESULT------- The project concludes with the design of Cleo: The Hands-on Design Tool for Conceptualizing Interactive Spaces. Cleo divides the entire process of designing interactive spaces into three (3) stages: Context, Concept, and Refinement; and five (7) creativity categories: Actionable Moments, Sensables, Technology, Design of Spaces, Ideation Strategies, Interactive Cases, and Energizers. The tangible design consists of four (4) custom-designed wooden containers that rest on a storage dock with 180+ specially designed cards and an smaller inspiration dock that sits at designers’ desks. ------- EVALUATION SUMMARY------- Cleo was tested in a series of eight (8) use cases with students and designers in academia in both individual and collaborative contexts and reviewed by two well-known design firms in industry. Results demonstrated a high level of flexibility in how designers can interact with the tool, indicating that the tool is adaptable to various project and design situations and highly appropriate for facilitating creative sessions. The depth and specialization of the tool makes it especially suited to the design of interactive spaces. Participants in all studies indicated an overall increase in productivity and creativity. Cleo is designed to be used without facilitation by researchers of this project to facilitate structure, creativity, and organization throughout any design period. This was successfully supported by the results of all single-user test cases and one multi-user test case. The remainder of the multi-user test cases indicate that the proactivity and team management skills of a designers are directly correlated to how effectively Cleo can be used. The double-sided design of every card effectively accommodated both visual thinkings and information-driven thinkers. Despite ten (10) decks of card tools, all participants found amount of content to be manageable, inspiring, and not intimating. ------- FUTURE OF CLEO------- Cleo is a design tool that designers can learn in advance or learn to use as they go, meaning that the way designers use the tool the first time is likely to be different from subsequent times. We suggest conducting longitudinal studies with specialized design firms or users tests with repeat participants to observe these effects. Cleo has proven to be a successful design toolkit for the creating interactive spaces both by function, form, and interaction. However, there are a few issues with Cleo that need to be addressed in future developments prior to introducing the tool to the commercial market. The issues include (1) creating a digital platform for updating content, (2) building a credible reputation for Cleo by way of either more user tests, or partnering with notable names in design, and (3) developing a sustainable business and distribution model that ensures the continued success of the tool.