No abstract

This contribution explores non-user integration in a product development context of the development of a vacuum robot in order to analyse users as well as non-users of a product. While user profiles like the persona have been part of product development and product design for years, the non-user has not been widely explored.Within this contribution the known concept of the persona is extended and further developed to the non-persona, a profile that describes non-users and why they do not use a certain product, in this case the vacuum robot. Including the non-user in product development offers the chance of addressing yet unidentified product requirements and therefore opening the product up to a bigger audience. This template works for both users and non-users and can be used to include both sides in a development project.

The House of Quality is an established model for human centric product development, that among other aspects uses both customer attributes and product requirements to define a product and its most important features. Industry application of this model is difficult due to its overall complexity and lack of clear instructions on how to specifically build a catalogue of customer attributes from user research in particular and how to prioritize them. This contribution seeks to simplify customer attribute formation and management by introducing the concept of non-use within a use case. Types of non-use and reasons for non-use of robot vacuums are examined and decoded into attributes. Attributes of users and non-users are compared and analyzed. By introducing a clear interview structure for users and non-users, this contribution visualizes how to translate interviews to attributes used within the House of Quality. The use case discussed in this contribution indicates that non-use can yield more information than conventional user research, since non-users’ reasons for non-use were more extensive than users’ negative feedback about the product and could therefore generate more attributes. Industry feedback suggests that non-user attributes are similar to user attributes and can therefore be used in place of user attributes.