USABILITY AND ‘SOFT PROBLEMS’: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK TESTED IN PRACTICE
Manufacturers are increasingly confronted with complaints from consumers that are related to nontechnical problems in product use. This study intends to contribute to the well being of consumers by developing a coherent design methodology, which can anticipate on expected problems users will face. It will lead to user satisfaction on product usability and, at the end, to market gain. As a stepping stone of the methodology, the paper proposes and evaluates a conceptual framework for studying four factors such as the role of user, product characteristics, use context and marketing concerning the occurrence of “soft usability problems in major household electronic products. For the evaluation of the conceptual framework two survey studies were conducted. The first study analyzed what soft usability problems consumers experienced using their household electronic products: what relationship exists between consumers soft usability problems and the four factors in the framework. For this survey a web-based questionnaire was used. A total of 64 Dutch and 59 South Korean subjects participated in the survey. The second study zoomed into only two products: a vacuum cleaner and a mobile phone. For these products the relationship was studied between soft usability problems experienced and variables in the four factors, most of which were not used in the first study. A paper-based questionnaire was used to gather the information. A total of 62 Dutch and 65 South Korean people took part in the questionnaire survey. They had not participated in the previous study. The results from the two studies indicate that types of soft usability problems are partly dependent on consumer-related variables, product-specific variables, and brand image and marketing. Especially, some personality variables and cultural differences show significant correlations with the problems. In addition, each soft product category has a close relationship with specific user characteristics variables. An evaluation of the current conceptual framework on the basis of the results of both studies shows that the framework can be further refined. The implications of these findings and suggestions for further study are discussed.
Chajoong Kim Henri H.C.M. Christiaans
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, The Delft University of TechnologyThe Netherlands Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, The Delft University of Technology The Netherlands
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-9
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）