As the above described work suggests, design and art practices and theories are increasingly used to make us -society- think, raise awareness, provoke action, spark debate, expose assumptions (Dunne and Raby, 2001) . Dunne and Raby introduced the term “critical design” in order to describe this phenomenon. Although the adaption of critical design “seems surprisingly limited” (Bardzell and Bardzell, 2013) within the HCI community, there is a need for the use of design practices -like critical design- to “enrich and expand our experience of everyday life” (Dunne and Raby, 2001). Bardzell et al. added “we see benefit in shedding light on critical design as an approach… Doing so will increase the dissemination of this relevant design approach and also broaden participation in effecting social change through design, which is what we all want.” (Bardzell et al., 2012). The need for such design approaches, which enables reflection for both the users and the designer, is highlighted even stronger by Sengers et al. as they conclude: “the value of reflection for HCI goes beyond simply opening new options for designers. It can support new awareness and freedom for users as well. …. That is to say, technology design practices should support both designers and users in ongoing critical reflection about technology and its relationship to human life.” (Sengers et al., 2005). Sengers et al., stressed the need for this “ongoing critical reflection” even further as they call it “a crucial element of a socially responsible technology design practice.” and later on “an essential component of socially responsible technology design” which led them toward a new approach “reflective design”. 

This new term can be seen as an umbrella which contains several different design practices in which reflection is key. These design practices are enumerated in the “foundations of reflective design”; Participatory design (Muller and Khun, 1993), Value- Sensitive design (Friedman, 1996), Critical design and Ludic design (Chirumamilla and Pal, 2013). In addition, Sengers et al., presented six principles of reflective design (Sengers et al., 2005): 

1. Designers should use reflection to uncover and alter the limitations of design practice. 
2. Designers should use reflection to re-understand their own role in the technology design process. 
3. Designers should support users in reflecting on their lives.
4. Technology should support skepticism about and reinterpretation of its own working.
5. Reflection is not a separate activity from action but is folded into it as an integral part of experience.
6. Dialogic engagement between designers and users through technology can enhance reflection.

Since many researchers have tried to define “critical design”, or broader “reflective design”, as a design practice and theory, this study will not focus on defining it further. Instead, this study focuses on creating tools for designers as well as the public to start the -in my opinion- the needed conversation. One would expect that tools for this design practice are already defined. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Bardzell and Bardzell, the literature regarding this practice “remains too undeveloped to offer the practical support needed for its broader uptake; … not by decoding whatever Dunne and Raby might have meant, but by actively and creatively developing critical design …” (Bardzell and Bardzell, 2013). In other words, there are no written guidelines that designers can follow. We -the HCI community- need to actively seek for creative ways to develop an understanding in addressing and assessing the design practices. However, as concluded by Bradzell and Bardzell also conclude that HCI researchers do not know how to. It is seen, among other things, this resulted in “people simply discounting the design as ridiculous or extreme but without examining why” (Sengers et al., 2005). 

In addition to the researchers that do not know how to apply the practice, I believe that the medium in which the reflective design is presented plays a tremendous role. Often, designs are presented at conventions, festivals, social media and even art fairs and designers tend to remain in the background in order to not influence the results, which is understandable. On the contrary, this placement of the design and behaviour of the designer rather creates a monologue instead of the wanted dialogue. In other words, the provoked reaction of the user is not measured in any way. 

As Bardzell and Bardzell learned during their study; before placing the designs in the field, it is “important to assess the provocativeness” first (Bardzell and Bardzell, 2013). Furthermore, the vocabulary of “breakthroughs” and “breakdowns” is used in order to conclude whether a design succeeded or failed. Although I understand the desire to create guidelines of success and failure, in my opinion the need to classify reflective designs to be good or not is a misconception of the purpose of the design. I believe, in reflective designs, there are no good or bad but only wrong expectations of the reactions. Once a reaction is provoked, the design fulfills its goal, which does not mean that the goals of the designer are reached as well. In addition, assessing reflective design depends highly on the ability of correct judgment of the designers and the expression capability of the users. Therefore, Sengers et al. expressed the desire to have ‘objective’ ways to conduct less time consuming and high efficient methods of evaluation in such a way that it is measurable in metrics (Sengers et al., 2005). Bardzell et al. looked further and saw opportunities in game evaluation methods (Bardzell et al., 2012), for example Nelson and Stolterman game play testing (Nelson and Stolterman, 2003). 

Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2013). What is “critical” about critical design? Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’13. https://doi. org/10.1145/2470654.2466451 
Blythe, M. A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A. F., & Wright, P. C. (2006). Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Springer Science & Business Media. 
Chirumamilla, P., & Pal, J. (2013). Play and power. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development Full Papers - ICTD ’13 - volume 1. https://doi.org/10.1145/2516604.2516628 
Dunne, A., and Raby, F. (2001). Design Noir:The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Birkhäuser. p. 147 
Friedman, B. (1996). Value-sensitive design. interactions, 3(6), 16– 23. https://doi.org/10.1145/242485.242493 
Muller, M. J., & Kuhn, S. (1993). Participatory design. Communications of the ACM, 36(6), 24–28. https://doi. org/10.1145/153571.255960
Nelson H. & Stolterman, E. The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications, 2003.
Sengers, P., Boehner, K., David, S., & Kaye, J. “Jofish”. (2005). Reflective design. Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing between sense and sensibility - CC ’05. https:// doi.org/10.1145/1094562.1094569

As Bardzell and Bardzell defined this design practice as “a more challenging view of human needs and experience” (Bardzell and Bardzell, 2013), I found it a natural next step to conduct further research in these experiences and how they are currently evaluated within the HCI community. In 1999, the first edition of the International Conference on Design & Emotion was organized, which can be seen as the start of a new way of understanding the relation between emotion and design. Since that event, a lot of research has been done in order to explore the relation between emotion and design and how they interact with each other. Mostly, the aim of these research is to generate grip on how to design for emotions. In my opinion, we might even conclude that the outcome of the conducted research provides tools for designers. 

There are three levels of product experiences according to Hekkert: aesthetic pleasure, attribution of meaning, and emotional response (Hekkert, 2006). Product experience can thus be defined as “the entire set of affects that is elicited by the interaction between a user and a product, including the degree to which all our senses are gratified (aesthetic experience), the meanings we attach to the product (experience of meaning) and the feelings and emotions that are elicited (emotional experience)” (Hekkert, 2006, p. 160). In addition, Desmet and Hekkert questioned why usability is not included as a fourth level of product experience (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007). They explain that usability is not a level of product experience since usability is not an affective experience. Thus, usability can be considered as a source of product experience which generates and influences all three levels of product experience. 

As Wright et al. describe, engaging in experiences is a process of sense making. “This process of sensemaking is reflexive and recursive.” (Blythe et al., 2006). So in order to build on this reflexive and recursive process, we first need to understand the experience of use. To do so, McCarthy and Wright introduced a framework to make sense of experience (McCarthy and Wright, 2004). As part of this framework, they found four intertwined threads of experience: compositional, sensual emotional and spatio-temporal thread. The compositional thread can be seen as the consequences and explanations of actions, the action possibility and plausibility. The sensual thread describes our sensory engagement in the interaction and raises emotions such as thrill, fear and excitement. Anger, frustration, joy, disappointment, etc. are included in the emotional thread. The spatio-temporal thread concerns about the time and place in which an event unfolds. Next to the threads, six sense making processes: anticipating, connecting, interpreting, reflecting, appropriating and recounting are added to the framework by McCarthy and Wright. 

Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2013). What is “critical” about critical design? Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’13. https://doi. org/10.1145/2470654.2466451 
Blythe, M. A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A. F., & Wright, P. C. (2006). Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Springer Science & Business Media. 
Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2007). Framework of Product Experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 13-23. 
Hekkert, P. (2006). Design aesthetics: Principles of pleasure in product design. Psychology Science, 48(2), 157-172. 
McCarthy, J. and Wright, P. Technology as experience. interactions 11, 5 (2004), 42–43.