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2.3. PRODUCT CONCEPT HYPOTHESES

Using the list of preliminary user values as a guide, the team then develops several product concept hypotheses to meet those user values and requirements. The concepts are not finished designs or even what might be considered “good” designs; they are designed to provoke reaction and feedback from users. The concepts are not designed to represent a final product; rather they are designed to represent alternative design solutions (see Figure 11.3).


Figure 11.3  Typical early concepts.

Concept hypotheses are tools to discover attributes that a successful product should have. Many of the product attributes will conflict with one another. For example the desire of customers to have an easy to use feature-packed cellular phone will conflict with their demand for small size and mobility. The best combination of attributes for a given group of users will be determined in the Refinement and Analysis Stage.

The number of initial UI design concepts is held at three to four, to allow users to give reasonable feedback. Four seems to be the optimum number of concept options that users can comprehend in a single session. Therefore, it is important to pick sketches that best articulate a diversity of possible user interface designs. With exploratory design it is important to present a clear and distinct range of contrasting concepts to stimulate responses from customers, and thus to better understand their values.

It is often insightful to explore concepts which might be “controversial”, forcing users to make tradeoffs and clearly identify what they like and dislike. For example, some of the Orbitor concepts which were presented did not have traditional telephone dialpads. Prior studies had suggested that these nontraditional concepts were not popular, but we included these concepts to further explore this finding.

Concepts are explored in focus groups which are set up to maximize the design team’s learning in the least number of trials. Users are asked to discuss what they like best and least, what changes they would like to see, and what ideas they have for combining various concept attributes to provide new solutions. The team’s learning should minimally include:

  What are the attributes that contribute to user value?
  What are the critical user tasks?
  What are the bottlenecks in the usability of the new product concept?

The subjects should be chosen to represent a sample of the target market population. Lead users, “power users”, or “early adopters” (e.g., real estate agents in the case of pagers and cellular telephones) should be included in the research. It can be very helpful to study less proficient potential users because they will give the UI designer insights into what design concepts are workable for a heterogeneous user group.

2.4. OUTPUT OF THE EXPLORATORY DESIGN STAGE

The first major output of the Exploratory Design Stage is the identification of high-level user values (see Table 11.1). The second output of the Exploratory Stage is a set of new-generation product concepts. Through these product design concepts, the team clearly defines:

  What the goals of the products are
  What the products are used for
  How the products are used
Table 11.1    Example of Key User Values from the Orbitor Project
1. Mobility
    • People want to send and receive voice calls and messages anywhere/anytime
2. Ease of use
    • People seek simplicity despite underlying complexity
3. Controlled accessibility
    • People want control over who gets through to them, when they can be reached, and by what means (voice, voice message, note, etc.)
4. Personalization
    • People want to customize the interface to their unique requirements
5. Call closure through multitasking
    • People to complete a communication task using either voice or note communication, or both simultaneously

The design concepts and the list of preliminary user values represent the design team’s hypothesis of what will make a successful product. This hypothesis is later tested in the Refinement and Analysis Stage.

3. CONCEPT REFINEMENT AND ANALYSIS STAGE

Concept refinement and analysis of users and tasks is the second stage in the overall UI design process for new generation products. The goal of the Refinement and Analysis Stage of development is to verify the user values and define the product attributes.

3.1. LIMITATIONS OF TASK ANALYSIS FOR NEW-GENERATION PRODUCT CONCEPTS

For new-generation products one of the limitations of the task analysis process is that there is a large gap between the existing work model (i.e., work carried out with current products) and the enhanced work model (i.e., work carried out with the new design concepts). New-generation products encompass features and services for tasks that do not yet exist, and detailed task analysis of the enhanced model would constrain the creativity of the design team without contributing useful information. In the analysis Stage of new-generation products, the focus is more on discovering and verifying user values and detailed product attributes required to deliver these values. The success of this strategy relies upon an iterative design process with substantial user input.

3.2. ANTECEDENT PRODUCTS — TASK ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT WORK MODEL

While the emphasis with new generation products is on the discovery and analysis of user values associated with the enhanced work model, this is not to suggest that the current work model should be ignored. Conducting limited task analysis of the current work model can be useful for identifying new product opportunities. New products will often integrate or replace the features supported by several older products. Tasks in the past which might have been accomplished using a diverse array of products might be done with a single new product. For new generation product design, it is helpful to understand the typical tasks performed with several of the antecedent products. For example, the Orbitor team required an understanding of how people used current telephones (desktop and cellular), text pagers, electronic schedulers, answering machines, fax machines, and E-mail applications (see Table 11.2).


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