Many medical and assistive devices are experienced as unpleasant and uncomfortable. On top of their discomfort, product users may also experience social unease. We label this process "product-related stigma" (PRS). This paper presents two measuring techniques that aim to objectively assess the 'degree' of PRS that is 'attached' to products. Both experiments focus on the behavioral deviations in the walking path of passers-by during a public and unprepared encounter with a user of a stigma-sensitive product (dust mask). The 'Dyadic Distance Experiment' measures exact interpersonal distances, whereas the 'Stain Dilemma Experiment' presents the passer-by with a choice in his walking path. Both experimental techniques are predominantly suited as comparison tools, able to compare products on their PRS-eliciting potential. Designers and developers can use these results to justify design decisions with quantitative data, to assess which product properties have influenced certain reactions, and to what extent subsequent improvements have been successful.

No abstract

When physical products become increasingly digitally connected, the traditional design space of an industrial designer becomes a blend of physical and digital elements. As a consequence of this evolution, products become a network of tangible artifacts and intangible services. While this opens a lot of design opportunities, it becomes challenging to keep track of the user and system interactions during the ideation process. Therefore, there is a need to revise the design ideation and conceptualisation tools available to design products and systems that allow interaction with both digital and physical product elements. Starting by identifying the challenges currently faced by designers, the research presented in this paper introduces and compares two creativity support tools that focus on the generation and definition of connected products. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the comparison results in a set of requirements of what a creativity support tool for connected products concept generation should consist of in order to be useful for industrial designers.

In this paper, we investigate the third stand, our perspective on embodied interaction with digital products and systems. First, we discuss its background of dematerialization, an ongoing evolution in which physical products and information carriers disappear, and become immaterial information packages and on-screen applications. We establish how dematerialization influences both design research and design practice. Next, we present a digital payment terminal that we designed in order to explore the added value of our third stand perspective. In an experiment, we compare it with an existing payment terminal. The results of the experiment reveal that the third stand terminal scores higher on hedonic values, like beauty and stimulation. The existing terminal scores higher on pragmatic values, like ease-of-use and efficiency. We position the third stand as a design approach that pleas for embodiment from a hedonic perspective, and propose to extend the argument for embodiment beyond pragmatic values. Finally, we suggest that the third stand celebrates the limitations of the physical world instead of trying to overcome them, and gives rise to specific emotional values like attentiveness, profundity and preciousness.

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: (I) 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. IKTRODUCTIONAs the fields of computing, communication and entertainment merge, designing understandable products and services becomes a major issue for industrial designers. Enormous advances in information technology have already provided us with information-based products where complexity of technology also meant complexity of use, often causing confusion and frustration for users. The question is how to overcome the gap between the users' expectations and abilities, and the design of a product and its potential use. This development makes it more and more relevant to understand how users experience, understand and use or avoid these products and services. Even with the design of simple products problems with usability and understandability are mostly due to a mismatch between the designer's model of how a user perceives, experiences and operates a product and the 'user model' itself (Norman, 1988). Users' activities will be influenced by the interaction between mental abilities, product properties and the situation, all of which are embedded in a cultural system.