Usefulness and needs construction process in innovative artefacts: an exploratory study of designers’ viewpoints

Abstract

Designing useful emerging technologies (e.g., Virtual Reality) needs that multidisciplinary teams composed of engineers, graphic designers and ergonomists. These designers with heterogeneous and various backgrounds have to dialog together to satisfy users’ needs in the software design. This depends on their representations and viewpoints. This paper explores how the usefulness and needs construction (phases, methods, tools and stakeholders) are currently considered in design literature and by different designers’ profiles through their viewpoints. Semi-structured interviews were performed with 10 designers and collected verbal data were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Results suggest that 1) viewpoints are often specific to a designer profile because of specialized literatures, profession and background; 2) some viewpoints are common to several designers’ profiles probably because of experiences and their former integrations in multidisciplinary projects. These findings allow us to advocate some recommendations to project leaders and to suggest a scientific perspective for future study on intra-group variability.