Henri Christiaans

Problem Structuring and Information Access in Design

In order to design proper information systems for designers, it is important to understand how they enrich their knowledge base during the design process, what triggers their queries for information, what strategies they use and what factors influence their behavior in relation to information seeking. Exploring these questions requires a closer look into the design process and the factors that influence information intake. In this paper different aspects of the design process will be considered that are relevant to information access during the early stages of this process. The implications of such aspects in the design of information systems to support designers will be discussed.

Decision making in the conceptual design phases: a comparative study

This paper presents a comparative study of the design processes of final-year industrial design students of two countries, the Netherlands and the Portugal, while conducting an individual design task. This task was identical for both groups making this comparison possible although the studies are 15 years apart. This new study gave us opportunity to observe new aspects initially not focused upon. The operational aims of this study are the identification and comparison of the way senior design students in both groups take decisions, the relation with design moves along the process, and the factors influencing the decisions and moves. For that purpose both verbal protocol analysis studies (VPA) were analysed on the basis of activities and decision-making moments described in terms of reasons behind it and goals intended to be achieved through it. The results indicate the relevance of two aspects: (1) the abductive reasoning that supports designing gains visibility through analysis based on decision making, where idea generation plays a key role and (2) the notion of design as a decision-making process could bridge, in a meaningful way, design education and design practice in organisations.

Cultural differences in product design: a study of differences between the South Korean and the Dutch kitchen environment

Several studies show that cultural variation is reflected in products and their use. The study presented here will offer a case, which might be representative for peoples daily life activities, i.e., the home kitchen. Dutch and Korean kitchen environment was investigated on cultural differences and similarities. A focus group method was used in combination with cultural probes. The study shows that cultural diversity is reflected in products and product experience of the kitchen environment. Understanding the needs, tasks and environments of the people for whom products are designed is the key for cross-cultural product design.

‘Soft’ usability problems with consumer electronics: the interaction between user characteristics and usability

The paper reports a study into consumers’ ‘soft’ usability problems they experience using electronic household products. These problems cannot be traced back to a specification violation failure, classified as no failure found (NFF). The aim of this study is to find a relationship between consumers’ soft usability problems and their personal characteristics, encompassing demographical and cognitive aspects. The complaints collected through an exploratory survey were classified into three categories of soft usability problems. The findings indicate that demographic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics as well as personal traits show significant correlations with these problem categories. Based on the data preliminary user profiles were made. By providing a new definition of usability problems and by user profiling, this study is expected to help design teams to get a better understanding of their target group. The implications of these findings for the product development process are discussed.

From function to context to form: precedents and focus shifts in the form creation process

In design, the form creation process involves imagining, seeing and drawing. Translating the vague and imprecise initial ideas into sketches requires significant ability, and in this process, images of existing products (precedents) are a welcomed aid. Searching for them, however, is difficult, because it requires either exhaustive browsing or verbalization of the ideas to be able to use search engines.This paper presents an approach that uses images as query seeds instead of keywords called Query by Example (QBE). This approach is tested through an empirical study. It shows that the approach is a significant step into helping designers satisfy their visual information needs. It also shows that, as designers change their focus from function to context to form, their way of expressing their information needs changes. It concludes suggesting ways of improving both current systems and the QBE software tested.

Barriers to and Enablers of Usability in Electronic Consumer Product Development: A Multiple Case Study

This study identified practitioner-reported barriers to and enablers of usability in the development of electronic consumer products. Barriers and enablers are properties, situations, or conditions in the product development process, team, or context that negatively or positively influence the usability of a product. Based on a review of literature on user-centered design and exploratory expert interview, central concepts for studying usability in practice were identified. This was used as input for the case study, which was conducted at 5 product development groups in large multinationals, making (a) portable audio/video players, (b) personal navigation devices, (c) cell phones, (d) laundry care products, and (e) home control products. Data were primarily collected through interviews with 31 product development practitioners. Based on the data collected, case descriptions were created and more than 1,500 barriers and enablers were identified, categorized, and analyzed. The results of the study are 23 sets of barriers and enablers, of which it is indicated in which of the cases they occur, and accompanied with illustrative quotations from the interviewees. In barriers and enablers, a predominantly “outside–in” relation was observed, from the more external properties of companies (market, company organization) to the more internal (process, team, project). This seems to indicate that the user-centeredness of a product development process is highly influenced by the context in which it is executed. The results also lead to the conclusion that if the goal is to make usable products, one cannot only address activities that are generally considered typical of user-centered design, such as conducting user research and user testing. One also has to take into account how these activities are integrated with and supported by the rest of the product development process, which in turn has to be supported by the product development organization.

Design Grammar - a pedagogical approach for observing teacher and student interaction.

Teacher and student interaction in a design-studio setting, also referred to as tutorial-learning or learning-by-doing, has been the blueprint of design education for decades. A crucial difficulty of design education is that the content of these meetings remains remarkably implicit. In this study we propose to explore the concept of Design Grammar as an observation framework for teacher-student interactions. Design grammar can be defined as the visual language used to design, i.e., the elements, and relationships between them, that are synthesized in the Form (understood as a unified structure of parts) of an artifact. In order to make this concept operational we developed a Design Grammar Model (DGM) which explicits the different elements involved in form-giving in design. We used the DGM to analyze the content of the interactions of junior Industrial Design students. We compared the results in terms of the student and teacher’s fluency in Design Grammar (DG), the criteria to evaluate fluency was: the frequency of references to DG, variety of references and articulation of DG elements. The main insight of our study was the observation that interactions with students with lower fluency in DG resulted in poorer performances from the teacher and therefore lower quality interactions.

Does Fixation Interfere with Product Usability

In operating unfamiliar products users often show fixation to certain action patterns even when it does not lead to any success. In fixation, users keep repeating non-working solutions and stick to an ineffective hypothesis. In this study the factors influencing fixation behaviour are examined. An experiment has been conducted in which three unfamiliar products and two familiar products had to be manipulated. The unfamiliar products were a can-opener, an overhead projector and a radio alarm clock. Subjects were selected from two age groups: 10 design students and 10 people between 45 and 65 years old, both males and females. The results show that fixation can exist on different levels: (1) on the level of the rules applied and (2) on a higher abstraction level dealing with the problem solving-strategy. Both user-related and product-related aspects influence the occurrence of fixation. It is concluded that designers should be aware of the fixation effects caused by interface errors and poor feedback. Designers should also realise that the type of problem (static versus dynamic problem; number of variables; the length of the use-sequence) has an impact on the way users deal with unfamiliar products.

A visual tool for analysing teacher and student interactions in a design studio setting

Abstract Teacher and student interaction in a design studio setting has always been the basis of design education. A fundamental difficulty of design education is that the content of these one-on-one meetings between teacher and students remains remarkably implicit. In this paper, we present an explorative study that uses the design grammar model (DGM) as an observational framework for teacher–student interactions. The DGM is rooted on the concept of design grammar that can be broadly defined as the visual language used to design. The study focuses on the industrial design junior students’ meetings with their teacher; our research proceeds from a protocol analysis of the transcripts that are coded according to the DGM. The resulting data are then used to develop a series of diagrams that are employed as a visual analysis tool. The diagrams synthesise and convey large amounts of data that permit immediate analysis and elicit new interpretations. The study resulted in encouraging results regarding the DGM’s potential as an analysis tool for teacher and student interactions, as well as a diagnostic tool for teachers.

User-Oriented Method as a Way to Humanise the User-Energy Relationship in Public Lighting

Current public lighting is predominately directed to reducing energy and often is understood as a technical issue rather than a human one, mostly based on photometric visual performance. By taking advantage of the inherent flexibility of current lighting technologies, this research aimed to contribute to a more sustainable lighting design practice, through the design of adaptive lighting solutions that improve the relationship between users, the space they inhabit and energy use. To confirm the hypothesis, it was developed a user-oriented method that considers a specific user-space relationship and the user’s perception of well-being. Tested via two outdoor field experiment in an urban space in the south of Portugal, qualitative and quantitative statistical analysis of the collected data, suggest that the method can provide data to aid the design of more tailored and flexible public lighting solutions that can balance the user-energy relationship, improving the overall sustainability of our cities.