The effects of prior experience on the use of consumer products

Many products today are laden with a host of features which, for the majority of users, remain unused and often obscure the use of the simple features of use for which the product was devised (Norman in The design of everyday things. Basic Books, 2002; Keates and Clarkson in Countering design exclusion—an introduction to inclusive design. Springer, 2004). Since the cognitive capabilities of the marketed target group are largely not affected by age-related impairment, the intellectual demands of such products are frequently high (Rabbitt in Quart J Exp Psychol 46A(3):385–434, 1993). In addition, the age and technology generation of a product user will colour their expectations of the product interface and affect the range of skills they have available (Docampo in Technology generations handling complex User Interfaces. Ph. D. thesis, 2001). This paper addresses the issue of what features of products make them easy or difficult to learn to use, for the wider population as well as the older user, and whether and in what way individual prior experience affect the learning and use of a product design. To achieve the above, the interactions of users of varying ages and capabilities with two different everyday products were recorded in detail as they performed set tasks. Retrospective verbal protocols were then analysed using a category scheme based on an analysis of types of learning and cognition errors. This data was then compared with users’ performance on individual detailed experience questionnaires and a number of tests of general and specific cognitive capabilities. The principal finding was that similarity of prior experience to the usage situation was the main determinant of performance, although there was also some evidence for a gradual, age-related capability decline. Users of all ages adopted a means-end or trial and error interaction when faced with unfamiliar elements of the interaction. There was a strong technology generation effect such that older users were reluctant or unable to complete the required tasks for a digital camera.     

Filling 'gaps' in strength data for design

Data on the physical strength capabilities of users are fundamental to the safe and usable design of products. It is recognised, however, that there are many 'gaps' in the ergonomics data available to designers. Whilst considerable research on human capabilities and limitations has already been carried out, few data exist which are directly applicable in the design process. This paper describes a two-stage research project which was undertaken to try to address some of these data 'gaps'. Potential needs for design-relevant data were identified in Stage 1 of the research and in Stage 2 new data were collected to meet some of those needs. Data were collected on children through to the older adult on a series of six strength measurements, all of which were intended to be directly applicable to design: (1) finger push strength, (2) pinch-pull strength, (3) hand grip strength, (4) wrist-twisting strength, (5) opening strength, and (6) push and pull strength. The methodology, findings and data from this research are presented and discussed.     

Balancing homogeneity and heterogeneity in design exploration by synthesizing novel design alternatives based on genetic algorithm and strategic styling decision

Designers constantly and consistently draft and develop both general concepts and directions to identify the solution that best fits the styling objectives of the lead designer. Designers often confront design fixations that cognitively clash to explore different design combinations. As design teams explore the range of possible design spaces of a certain design strategy, there is an opportunity for computational approaches to improve the styling process. By implementing product appearance similarity and styling strategy in computational design synthesis, it is possible to discover combinations that would otherwise remain unexplored by human designers. Numerous studies on design synthesis have been conducted. However, there has been no focus on the morphological synthesis of designs with strategic styling decisions. Considering this, the proposed study develops a method to synthesize car styling based on product appearance similarity for effective design exploration in the concept generation phase. The similarities of products across different generations, product portfolios, and competitors’ products are calculated to evaluate the strategic styling decision. The results of the strategic styling decision are used to formulate a fitness function. Car styling is then synthesized with a genetic algorithm based on this fitness function to generate car styling in accordance with the target strategic styling decision. In this respect, designers can computationally synthesize novel design alternatives that consider both homogeneity (family look in design) and heterogeneity (design trend in the market) by pinpointing the desired design exploration area. Ultimately, the style synthesis methodology proposed in this research can help designers to utilize the gradual visualization of styling strategies for more effective and efficient managerial design decisions. To do this, we conduct five major tasks: first, car design data are collected for design synthesis; second, the product appearance similarity is calculated to measure the strategic styling decision; third, synthesis validation is conducted to test whether the proposed methodology can create outside-the-box designs; fourth, a genetic algorithm is used to synthesize car designs in consideration of the strategic styling decision; finally, a series of in-depth interviews with experts and validation experiments are conducted with in-house automobile designers to examine the impact of the proposed methodology. The results showed that designers can quantitatively measure and compare the styling strategies of each car brand, then implement design upgrades, while still maintaining that specific style. Correspondingly, computationally generated design alternatives improve the satisfaction in ease, time, objective reflection and novelty of design outcomes when formulating design strategies in the concept generation phase.     

Wang laboratories' VLSI design strategy or Putting blinders on your engineers keeps your horse in the race

The article discusses the rationale used to make the decision to implement a constrained design capability for VLSI in Wang. A CAD/CAM system will be put in place that will permit product designers to achieve design and manufacturing turn-a-round times that are consistent with a product development cycle of 18 to 24 months. The functional requirements of the various subsystems are discussed as well as those for the excutive, the data base, and the audit capability. The latter capabilities are necessary to achieve a controlled constrained design environment.     

Designing inclusive products for everyday environments: the effects of everyday cold temperatures on older adults’ dexterity

This paper focuses on the effect that an everyday cold temperature (5 °C) can have on older adults’ (+65 years) dexterous capabilities and the implications for design. Fine finger capability, power and pinch grip were measured using objective performance measures. Ability to perform tasks using a mobile phone, stylus, touch screen and garden secateurs were also measured. All measures were performed in a climatic cold chamber regulated at 5 °C and in a thermo-neutral environment regulated between 19 °C and 24 °C. Participants were exposed to the cold for a maximum of 40 min. Results from the study showed that older adults’ fine finger dexterity, ability to pick up and place objects and ability to use a mobile phone were significantly (p < 0.05) affected by an everyday cold temperature of 5 °C when compared to performance in the thermo-neutral environment. However, power and pinch grip strength and ability to use the gardening secateurs were not significantly affected by the cold. Based on these findings, the following guidance is offered to designers developing products that are likely to be used outside in an everyday cold environment: (1) minimise the number of product interactions that require precise fine finger movements; (2) try to avoid small controls that have to be pressed in a sequence; (3) maximise the number of product interactions that can be operated through either exerting a gripping action (power or pinch grip) or by gross hand and arm movements.     

浅谈产品的创新设计

在现代工业产品设计中,设计创意与创新设计对产品设计的成功起着举足轻重的作用,设计师的创意与创新设计能使其设计的工业产品给大众留有深刻的印象,因为新奇能给予人很深的印象,此论文谈及了设计的表现基础,同时对一些名师的设计进行了分析,使大家更加了解到工业设计中的创意与创新对工业产品的作用,希望通过此论文的学习,使大家能更多的了解创意与创新设计,并能在以后的设计中突发其想,做出更多优秀新奇的工业产品设计。     

Hold, grasp, clutch or grab: consumer grip choices during food container opening

Society is ageing and sadly that ageing leads to a host of issues, not least a society in which the majority are likely to have some loss of strength and dexterity. This can lead to complications in undertaking everyday tasks such as using transport, bathing or even handling and opening food.Packaging has to provide a multitude of services; to protect and preserve the product, to provide information to the consumer and not least to allow access to the contents. This access to packaging - or ‘openability’ - has become a significant issue for designers and manufacturers with the change in demographics as described above. Understanding the choices consumers make in how they manipulate packaging can help designers produce packaging that is more able to meet the requirements of modern society. Studies previously undertaken by the authors showed that consumers did use different grips when opening packaging and that certain grips were theoretically more comfortable and stronger than others. This paper outlines a further study whereby consumers were asked to apply the most common grips to a specially designed torque measuring device.Details were taken about the consumers: age, gender, occupation, hand size, plus their preferred grip choice for packaging of this type. The study showed that typically women chose a grip that maximised their opportunity of opening the closure and that this grip choice was more limited than that available for men. This has implications for inclusive design of many everyday products.     

A method of constructing an inspiration library driven by user-perceived preference evaluation data for biologically inspired design

Biologically inspired design (BID) is one of the common methods for product design. To solve the problem of inaccurate acquisition of inspirational creatures due to the lack of user perception preference analysis, a data-driven intelligent service model for BID considering user perception needs is proposed based on Kansei engineering. Firstly, by extracting the perceptual features of creatures from the semantic source elements of products through mapping and encodes them, we proposed a data acquisition method based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets considering different customer preference distributions, bridging the gap caused by the asymmetry between designers and users. Secondly, the functional relationship between biometric features and user-perceived attributes is identified and predicted, and a predictive model of biodata considering user preferences is obtained by multiple linear regression analysis. Finally, based on the data clustering and reorganization theory to understand the organization and dynamics of the database, the construction of a BID library was completed, and the design resources in the library were used as analyzed knowledge for designers to plan design activities. Taking the bionic design of a UAV product as an example, a prototype of a computer-aided design service system was developed based on the theory proposed in the article, and the analyzed knowledge was used to improve the efficiency and science of the design, effectively verifying the usefulness of this study for design. To a certain extent, this study addresses the problem of cognitive limitations of designers and cognitive differences between designers and users, promotes the application of bioinspiration in product design, and improves the marketability of design solutions.     

A decision-making framework model for design and manufacturing of mechanical transmission system development

Knowledge-based systems are proving to be a powerful tool with great potential for developing intelligent design support environments to improve quality of products and reduce product development costs by eliminating or minimizing many of the trial-and-error iterations involved in product development. This article describes an approach towards the development of intelligent design support environments for mechanical transmission systems, along with implementation details of a distributed knowledge-based gearing design and manufacturing system that is deployed over the Internet. The system embodies the various tasks of the design process, with modules that address: performance evaluation, process optimization, manufacturability analysis, and provides reasoning and decision-making capabilities for reducing the time between gear tooth creation, detailed design and final production. This methodology is highly desirable in that it is able to simulate real working conditions, evaluate and optimize the design effectively, prevent designers from time-consuming iterations and reduce long and expensive test phases.     

Human factors of a microelectronic product: the central heating timer/programmer

The advent of microelectronics has enabled designers to incorporate considerably more functional capability and flexibility into products than was previously possible. Technical capabilities are no longer major constraints and designers are finding it increasingly difficult to choose between a vast range of alternatives. In an effort to narrow the range, designers are turning to behavioural scientists in marketing, ergonomics and psychology to guide them when selecting functions, specifying operating procedures and selecting components. This paper illustrates the application of human factors techniques to the analysis of problems with existing consumer products and to the synthesis of novel designs incorporating advanced microelectronics components. Within this general theme the paper concentrates on the design of a particular product - the central heating timer/programmer.     

Shifts in sensory dominance between various stages of user-product interactions

In the area of product design, sensory dominance can be defined as the relative importance of different sensory modalities for product experience. It is often assumed that vision dominates the other senses. In the present study, we asked 243 participants to describe their experiences with consumer products in various situations: while buying a product, after the first week, the first month, and the first year of usage. The data suggest that the dominant sensory modality depends on the period of product usage. At the moment of buying, vision is the most important modality, but during the usage the other sensory modalities gain importance. The roles of the different modalities during usage are product-dependent. Averaged over 93 products analyzed in this study, after one month of usage touch becomes more important than vision, and after one year vision, touch and audition appear to be equally important. We conclude that to create a long-lasting positive product experience, designers need to consider user-product interaction at different stages of product usage and to determine which sensory modality dominates product experience at each stage.     

工业产品设计中的美学元素分析

本文分析构成产品符号系统的美学元素:形态、材质、色彩、加工工艺、声音、动作、灯光等要素,以及其对使用者视觉、触觉、听觉系统的不同感受。为产品设计者根据消费者不同的心理需求,对不同的产品美学元素科学合理地选用,为设计出具有不同情感价值的产品提供借鉴作用。     

Pragmatic research issues confronting HCI practitioners when designing for universal access

Many HCI products exclude potential users unnecessarily. Such exclusion often arises because of a mismatch between designers’ perceptions of the wants and needs of the end-user and their actual wants and needs. Sometimes the mismatch originates from the designer being unaware of the need to design inclusively, or of methods for implementing inclusive design. Other times the mismatch comes from the commissioner of the design, for example the client of a design consultancy. If the design commissioner specifies a target socio-economic group, but does not explicitly recognise that the group consists of users of varying functional capabilities, then the designers will often be given a design brief that overlooks the need to address the wider range of users, beyond simply the able-bodied. In either case, for universal access to be achieved effectively, information is required to identify the need for inclusive design and thus to generate demand, and design guidance is needed to help designers make inclusive design a reality. Currently, that information is largely unavailable to designers in an appropriate off-the-shelf format. This paper investigates methods for researchers to provide the kind of information that HCI designers need to design for universal access. It focuses on the profiling, recruitment and selection of users, along with the interpretation of the data gathered. In many instances, the HCI designer may also be the person performing the research, where specialist researchers are not available.     

基于人群感性认知的产品符号提炼及运用

当今已进入"感性消费"时代。这就要求产品设计者不但要了解感性认知如何影响消费者行为。也要掌握体现产品形态语意的符号的获取方式。本文利用心理描述测试法和聚类分析验证了情感矩阵的感性人群分类方式在中国的可适用性。并以座椅为例,利用SD语意差异法和主成因子分析法,对其感性认知经验进行了产品符号的提炼和验证运用。提炼出的产品符号在帮助设计者构思或验证未来感性产品设计这点上具有一定的参考价值和意义。     

Countering design exclusion: bridging the gap between usability and accessibility

It is known that many people are being excluded unnecessarily from using products, services and environments that are essential for supporting independence and quality of life. Such exclusion often arises from designers taking inadequate account of the end users functional capabilities when making design decisions. This paper addresses how traditional usability techniques can be extended to include accessibility issues by considering the spread of user functional capabilities across the population. A series of measures for evaluating the level of design exclusion based on those capabilities is also presented.     

A taxonomy and decision support for the design and manufacture of types of product families

The realization that designing products in families can and does have significant technological and economic advantages over traditional single product design has motivated increasing interest in recent years in formal design tools and methodologies for product family design. However, currently there is no guidance for designers in the first key strategic decisions of product family design, in particular determining the type of product family to design. Hence, in this paper, first a taxonomy of different types of product families is presented which consists of seven types of product families, categorized based on number of products and time of product introduction. Next a methodology is introduced to support designers in deciding which type of product family is appropriate, based upon early knowledge about the nature of the intended product(s) and their intended market(s). From this information it follows both which manufacturing paradigm and which fundamental design strategies are appropriate for each type of product family. Finally, the proposed methodology is illustrated through a case study examining a family of whitewater kayaks.     

Inclusive design: beyond capabilities towards context of use

Inclusive design is oriented to a particular outcome, to ensure that products and services address the needs of the widest possible audience. Approaches towards achieving this aim include the use of ergonometric data to predict product exclusion and the participation of extreme users in a design team. This discussion paper extends these approaches by comparing the inclusive design process to the design process that has evolved for Interaction Design within Human Computer Interaction, and in so doing identifies additional issues and processes. Potential ways practicing designers in an Inclusive Design context might approach these concepts are suggested. True Inclusive Design must engage the widest population as actual users not just potential users. This objective can only be achieved through a move from a view of Inclusive Design as solely concerned with individual capabilities to a view of Inclusive Design set in a social context.     

Extending the Ecological Interface Design process—Integrated EID

This article aims to extend the traditional Ecological Interface Design (EID) process. With the rapid pace of digitalization in technological systems, there is a need for a design process that can handle the systemic design goals and the experiential basis of interaction. Currently, the traditional EID is well-positioned to address these challenges. However, methodologically, it needs to be substantiated to make it accessible for designers, designing for novel arenas, such as Industry 4.0. Further, substantiating the design process will help designers, engineers, and human factors researchers with an accessible pathway that links the design brief to the final interface form. Therefore, this article delves into the “design” basis in the work of the Risø group and other prominent EID researchers and practitioners. In addition, it draws from a variety of themes in the discipline of design that addresses methodology. In particular, key insights are drawn from the design methods movement (1960s—); design, communication, and complexity from the Ulm school of design, 1953–1968; cognitive research conducted on designers and design activities; and finally, interaction design and communication design processes and models. All of these insights have been used syncretically to create the new integrated EID (iEID) process. This new design process consists of nine stages divided into three phases of divergence, transformation, and convergence, converting the initial design brief to the final interface. The steps of iEID are demonstrated using the example of interface design for a “digital twin” in the manufacturing sector.     

交互产品设计中的符号指向

在体验经济时代,交互产品设计得到越来越多的重视。本文运用符号学的一些原理来分析交互产品设计,从产品的交互方式和人的感官角度进行一些探索性的研究,希望能给设计师们的设计带来些启发,从而创造出更好的产品。