10.5 Desire to help others This is a less common motivation but it shows not everyone is driven by money. In 1991 the inventor Trevor Baylis saw a BBC documentary about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. What was needed was a way of broadcasting the safe-sex message to people in areas without electricity and where batteries for a radio could cost a month's wages. Solar power wouldn't necessarily help as most people who could get to a radio listened in the evening after work. While absorbing this information he ima
2.1 Everyday life Picture an everyday scene. You're in a high street coffee shop. All around you people are drinking coffee. Some people are chatting with friends, others are using their mobile phone. A few individuals seem to be working – consulting their laptop computers, scribbling notes. In a corner of the coffee shop an internet cafe has been set up. At one table a couple of teenagers are laughing at a message in a chat room, while at another table an old chap searches the Web for something. Now
1 Part 1 Investigating the innovation process In Part 1 I invite you to look around at the technological products in your home or at work and consider their development history and their impact on the lives of you and your family. I then define the key concepts associated with the process of invention, design, innovation and diffusion.
1.1.3 Features of diagrams As there is variety in the types of diagrams we can see and use we need to think more broadly about what diagrams are trying to represent. One distinction which follows on from the discussion above is:
Analogue representations: these diagrams look similar to the object or objects they portray. At their simplest they are photographs of real objects and at their most complicated they are colourful, fully labelled drawings of the inner workings o
13 Products for markets Japanese car companies came to dominate in many countries in the 1980s, and this was in part attributable to their marketing research and emphasis on designing products for particular market segments. An example is the car firm Nissan, which researches national preferences for various car attributes in different countries. For instance, it is reputed to have provided its cars with softer suspensions in Germany, firmer steering in the UK, and noisier exhausts in Italy. There are other reasons
12.1.1 Survey questionnaires Questionnaires are lists of questions that enable information to be gathered efficiently from a relatively large number of respondents. Most questionnaires require a fixed type of response, such as a choice between available answers, or along a scale of response. For example, a product design questionnaire might suggest, ‘I found the product easy to use’ and provide a five-point scale of response from ‘agree strongly’ to ‘disagree strongly’. Or a question might be, ‘how often do
12.1 Gathering data In this section I will review some of the approaches and methods used by companies for identifying and exploiting marketing opportunities. All over the world, producer companies have increasingly learned to keep a careful watch on emerging consumer requirements and changing user needs and wishes. They have not only learned to listen to what consumers say, but to watch what they do. Techniques used in market research to gather consumers’ views on products include both quantitative meth
11.1 he four pleasures In consumerist societies, buying, using and displaying products has come to represent a certain type of pleasure. This pleasure principle has to be acknowledged in new product development and design. The designer Kenneth Grange has said that a guiding design principle for him is that a product should be ‘a pleasure to use’. The pleasures of using a product are derived from the perceived benefits it offers to the user. Can we be more explicit in planning product benefits that are ple
9.1.5 Immersion Click on the 'View document' link below to read Jordan on 'Immersion'. 9.1.4 Take a trip to the payphone Click on the 'View document' link below to read 'Take a trip to the payphone'. 9.1.2 Limits Second, decide the limits and the variations to the user trip or trips that you are going to take. It is usually a good idea to extend the trip into activities that both precede and succeed the immediate use of the product you are investigating since this may lead you into devising an improved, more integrated overall solution. Similarly, variations on a basic trip – different times of day, different weather conditions, different requirements – will probably bring to light a wider range o 9.1.1 Point of view Decide first of all which user's point of view you are taking: consumer, operator, maintenance person, and so on. You may want to make several trips, from different user perspectives, or try special user perspectives, such as that of a disabled person. It is usually easiest to take a consumer's trip because you may need special permission, access, and perhaps skills, before you can take any other. 9.1 User trip This section introduces a simple method of investigating product use. Even such simple methods can provide useful information to guide product redesign and new product development. The essential idea of user trips is simple: you just take a ‘trip’ through the whole process of using a particular product or system, making yourself a critical observant user. The only way to learn how to make these user trips is to try one or two for yourself. You will be surprised how much you fi 8.1.2 Feedback A second important principle is providing feedback to the user – for example, when you press a button it moves and clicks, or you hear some other sound or you see a light to indicate the action has been registered by the machine. Here's another short video clip from Phillip Joe at IDEO, this time on feedback. 8.1.1 Visibility Recall that a key usability design feature identified by Donald Norman – from his analysis of using everyday objects such as doors – was visibility. An everyday object such as a door, or a control such as a button on a product should appear to be obvious about how it is used, and indeed it should perform that obvious function. For example, is it obvious how you insert a disc into a player? Is it obvious how you switch the machine on, adjust volume, and so on? 8.1 Making usable products This section reveals that many modern products need to usable by our minds as much as our bodies. Products need to be understandable, and present information and feedback in meaningful ways. A lot of ergonomics research is aimed at establishing guidelines, standards or rules that can be applied by designers in a variety of situations. Where this applies to the physical use of products, much of it is based on standard body measurements. These body measurements are known as anthropomet 7 Ergonomics and human factors This section discusses designing for human capabilities and limitations. It introduces the study of ergonomics which can offer general guidelines as well as specific suggestions for good, user-centred product design. Taking the user as the central point of reference for the design and evaluation of products is the approach encouraged by ergonomists. The field of ergonomics (also known as human factors engineering) is the systematic study of human capabilities, limitations and requ 6 Inclusive design This section reveals the importance of designing things to suit all potential users. Inclusive design (or universal design) means designing products so that they can be used easily by as many people as wish to do so. This may sound an obvious goal, but the fact is that many people – some estimates suggest as many as one-fifth of all adults – have difficulty carrying out ordinary tasks with everyday products. Many elderly and disabled people cannot carry out – certainly with 4 Who are the users? This section reveals that ‘users’ can include a wide variety of people – not just the final purchasers or consumers of a product. The section also makes the case for strong user representation in the design process. Of course, it is not only me who uses the various products in my home; other people use them as well, both members of the family and visitors. Sometimes the range of users of a product, and their different needs, can be diverse. And in addition to the obvious or intend 5.7.1 Mixed oxidant gases system This is a relatively new system of disinfection. It involves electrolysis of high-purity NaCl brine to produce a mixture of chlorine dioxide, ozone and hypochlorite. This mixture is separated within the electrochemical cell by a membrane, or by exploiting density difference, and is then metered into the water requiring disinfection. The mixed oxidant gases are generated on demand and this is a great safety advantage, compared with having storage tanks of chlorine on site. The source for the d
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