Interaction design

Our colleagues at ‘the product usability weblog’ have written a nice article about the new ISO standard 20282. Why is this interesting? Because now usability experts have a common platform to judge whether, and to what extent a product is ‘usable’. Said thing is we have to pay for getting the ISO standards, while their goal is to ’standardize’. By limiting the availability their reach is less, and it will take longer before it is a standard, see the paradox? But that is another discussion.

The new ISO is built out of four sections;

• Design requirements for context of use and user characteristics
• Test method for walk-up-and-use products
• Test method for consumer products
• Test method for the installation of consumer products

An especially interesting section was;

“The purpose of the test is to provide a basis for predicting the ease of installation of a consumer product, including measures of its effectiveness and efficiency of installation, and the satisfaction of the intended user population in the intended context of its use”

All usability experts and industry guru’s proclaim that in order to judge the usability you have to test this with users and working prototypes. This ISO claims to have a standard that can ‘predict‘ to which extent ‘ease of installation’ both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, and satisfaction! I am suspicious that they have developed a standard that can ‘predict’ this. But I haven’t read it so if any has used the new standard I would certainly like to hear your experiences. [Continue reading...]

Almost every company that produces consumer products has this tension and internal fight between the ‘marketing’ and ‘design’ department. They speak different languages and they are continuously talking about different things.

Marketeers talk about positioning a new product in the portfolio for the high end segment for this specific customer group. And that is were marketeers are invaluable, they discover new markets and keep in contact with customers to define costumer needs and the proposition of the product. They are responsible, especially product managers, for pricing, how the product is distributed and sometimes for logistics.

As it is hard to admit, in most companies marketeers and product managers decide if a new product has to be added to the portfolio or not. Designers have to develop a product that meets the costumer needs and value proposition defined by the marketeers. And it is this handover where most problems occur. [Continue reading...]

Some while ago Brian Ling from design sojourn wrote an article about bad habits of designers. After the user contributions the list has 30 bad habits designers have. [Continue reading...]

Artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde has developed an interactive artwork of lights. The artwork is a huge collection of small lights that glow up when people pass by. [Continue reading...]