Engaging the User's Memory of Experiences in Design 'Dramatizing Product Experience' (DPE)

User research in Design has been dominated by various user-representation techniques that aim to simplify rather than clarify the user's role. This has led to misinterpretations of user intentions and a discrepancy between Design results and user expectations. Therefore, this research proposes a novel concept of understanding the user, by engaging the user's memory of experiences in the Design process. This novel concept is presented in three steps. (1) We describe the paradigm shifts in Design, which emphasize the user's increasing control to appropriate and transform product experiences actively, rather than just receiving them passively. (2) We argue for a re-evaluation of the user's status within the Design process. (3) We present our framework of 'Dramatizing Product Experiences' (DPE) to suggest how Designers may change their attitudes towards new ways of understanding product experience and to help avoid simplified user-image representations. For this, guidelines and ideas are suggested and are exemplified with an experimental case study that combines 'Improvisational Theatre', 'Collaborative Retrospection', and 'Video Documentation'. We argue that this ultimately supports to assure and clarify the user's role in the early stage of the Design process.