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Task analysis of the current work model may include the following:
Studying antecedent products also allows the design team to do functional analysis, i.e., understanding the underlying functional reasons for the task, and not simply the surface procedures associated with the current work model. Functional analysis gives the team the information to redesign tasks, perhaps eliminating the requirement for a task to exist at all. Task analysis of antecedent products can further be used as a checkpoint to evaluate the feature list of new product concepts, i.e., it can be used to uncover the requirement for a basic feature that might have been ignored in the high-level user value analysis of the new product concepts.
3.3. NEW GENERATION PRODUCTS USER VALUES
Whereas the Exploratory Stage can be characterized by ideation and far-reaching exploration without any effort to get the design right, design in the Refinement and Analysis Stage is more directed. In the Refinement and Analysis Stage the concepts become more highly detailed and defined. The goal of the Refinement and Analysis Stage is to clearly define what mix of attributes the final product must have to deliver the highest customer value and thereby make a successful product.
Based on the opportunities identified in the Exploratory Stage, a second series of concepts are designed and developed. Using the new concepts, a thorough assessment of user requirements and values is conducted through the use of one- to two-person interviews or focus groups. With this process, analysis is not done by observing users doing a current task with a current product rather they are shown new concepts and asked to react to how this concept aligns with their future needs. As in the Exploratory Stage, new product concepts can be communicated to users with scenarios. However, in the Refinement and Analysis Stage, scenarios are more explicit and better detailed to facilitate the presentation of new concepts to end users, such that they will better understand the implication of the product for their work.
Scenarios are presented to groups of customers for their reaction. The scenarios are easy for the customers to understand because they are short, to the point, and they outline a specific task with specific goals. Based upon customer feedback, the key customer values and the required product attributes become known to the design team.
Storyboards scenarios can be developed into video-based scenarios. Video is useful to seamlessly and realistically convey new product concepts to end users, possibly resulting in better user feedback.
Video can be a particularly effective technique because:
A video is the equivalent of an architects scale building model. It is understood at some level by all the clients, and captures the overall look and feel of the building without necessitating any premature detailed design work.
In the Orbitor project, storyboards and a video were created using scenarios to illustrate key capabilities. The scenarios depicted the product in context and permitted a comparison with the use of existing products (to give users a baseline for evaluation). Concepts were also communicated to users with physical models. With consumer electronic products it is important to assess both the display-based interface and the physical interface together in the users environment. As Alan Kay noted over 28 years ago in his visionary design of the Dynabook laptop computer, even the computers weight is very much part of the user interface (Davidson, 1993).
3.4. OUTPUT OF CONCEPT REFINEMENT AND ANALYSIS STAGE
The major output of the Refinement and Analysis Stage is the verification of the customer value hypothesis. This is expressed in terms of a list of detailed product attributes which have been verified through testing with users (see Table 11.3). Table 11.3 shows a list of attributes in a simple tabular form. The next step in the design process is to reformulate this list into a high-level flow chart to represent the sequence of tasks and the interactions between various tasks (see Figure 11.4). The user feedback should also provide the information required by the design team to make design trade-off decisions (i.e., attribute mix and weighting required to optimize a design concept for a specific target group of users).
Figure 11.4 Example of high-level task flow chart.
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