Evaluating online customer data helpfulness to set targets: a QFD perspective

Retrieving knowledge and useful information from customers is crucial to develop customer-focused products and maintain the market share. With the rapid growth of the Internet, the ability of users to create and publish content has generated a wealth of product information from customers’ point of view. Given the abundance of large scale, publicly available data social media can enable novel social ways of providing and receiving feedback from new products and concepts. In order to avoid information overload, identifying and analyzing helpful reviews has become a critical challenge. Identifying helpful online reviews and learning how to extract valuable data from product design perspective has become a crucial task due to the existing information overload –identifying what is relevant to analyze is a key task for companies. Existing studies have focused on identifying variables that affect the perceived helpfulness of an online comment. To the best author’s knowledge, actual studies about helpfulness do not consider the Quality Function Deployment perspective on evaluating to what extend the customer data from social media is helpful to set objective targets. The thesis aims to evaluate social media data helpfulness from the designer’s perspective taking as basis QFD. Evaluating this, the work hypothesis is that the helpfulness definition has to move beyond, taking into consideration what is needed to build The House of Quality, a key tool in product design. To do so, an exploratory analysis of real public data from Twitter, Facebook and iMore forum is taken as basis. The purpose of undertaking exploratory research is primarily to investigate and to identify if the proposed variables for defining review’s helpfulness currently existing in the literature review can help designers in target setting within a QFD perspective The presented thesis shows that to go further within target setting is needed to have the QFD perspective: not all current exposed variables do not help to explain online reviews helpfulness.Outgoin

The feasibility of using virtual prototyping technologies for product evaluation

With the continuous development in computer and communications technology the use of computer aided design in design processes is becoming more commonplace. A wide range of virtual prototyping technologies are currently in development, some of which are commercially viable for use within a product design process. These virtual prototyping technologies range from graphics tablets to haptic devices. With the compression of design cycles the feasibility of using these technologies for product evaluation is becoming an ever more important consideration. This thesis begins by presenting the findings of a comprehensive literature review defining product design with a focus on product evaluation and a discussion of current virtual prototyping technologies. From the literature review it was clear that user involvement in the product evaluation process is critical. The literature review was followed by a series of interconnected studies starting with an investigation into design consultancies' access and use of prototyping technologies and their evaluation methods. Although design consultancies are already using photo-realistic renderings, animations and sometimes 3600 view CAD models for their virtual product evaluations, current virtual prototyping hardware and software is often unsatisfactory for their needs. Some emergent technologies such as haptic interfaces are currently not commonly used in industry. This study was followed by an investigation into users' psychological acceptance and physiological discomfort when using a variety of virtual prototyping tools for product evaluation compared with using physical prototypes, ranging from on-screen photo-realistic renderings to 3D 3600 view models developed using a range of design software. The third study then went on to explore the feasibility of using these virtual prototyping tools and the effect on product preference when compared to using physical prototypes. The forth study looked at the designer's requirements for current and future virtual prototyping tools, design tools and evaluation methods. In the final chapters of the thesis the relative strengths and weaknesses of these technologies were re-evaluated and a definitive set of user requirements based on the documentary evidence of the previous studies was produced. This was followed by the development of a speculative series of scenarios for the next generation of virtual prototyping technologies ranging from improvements to existing technologies through to blue sky concepts. These scenarios were then evaluated by designers and consumers to produce documentary evidence and recommendations for preferred and suitable combinations of virtual prototyping technologies. Such hardware and software will require a user interface that is intuitive, simple, easy to use and suitable for both the designers who create the virtual prototypes and the consumers who evaluate them

Visual preferences in an ageing population : design, theory, practice, education & critical reflection

Formative periods represent early phases in life when we are particularly sensitive to experiences that influence later choices. This investigation hypothesised that the design of products associated with formative periods continues to influence preference throughout life. In design for an ageing population these preferences are important because designers often wrongly assume a decline in interest in design and physical ability. If these assumptions are prioritised there can be a detrimental effect on the visual sensitivity and emotional value products convey. In the United Kingdom a significant proportion of the ageing population is financially independent, physically healthy and resistant to traditionally negative associations of ageing. However, limited interrogation of the design process, or of the products produced, leaves a largely youth orientated design industry ill- equipped to challenge these associations and design for consumers whose experiences differ from their own. This investigation interviewed leading design professionals to test these assumptions and to inform an innovative questionnaire to identify visual preference. The questionnaire incorporated images of domestic products from 1930 to 1990 and asked for rapid responses reflecting intuitive preferences. A fifty five percent , response rate was achieved from 5,000 questionnaires posted to respondents aged fifty to seventy five years. Analysis of the findings identified two associations. Firstly, a statistically small association between age and visual preference, older respondents preferred older products, although the association was marginal and insufficient to support the hypothesis. Secondly, visual analysis revealed a strong preference for the most familiar form of the product, proposed as representing the 'contemporary essence'. These findings challenge assumptions that ageing is accompanied by a decline in design interest. Rather, the economic and social cost of establishing a design environment reduces the flexibility of future choices. These issues are age neutral. To address these issues, a critically reflective design approach is proposed as a positive response to an ageing population in an inclusive society

Towards an activity-oriented design method for HCI research and practice

During the last two decades, designing for usability has been the focus of attention when developing computer systems. However, the dynamic nature of human use of computer systems has meant that designing for 'usefulness' or 'fitness for purpose' is increasingly becoming the primary concern for systems developers. Central to this concern are issues underpinned by the social context in which a computer user operates.Within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), this situation led to a search for appropriate theories for conceptualising these design concerns. Whilst Activity Theory has been identified as a suitable framework for conceptualising these user perspectives, the lack of a standard methodology for applying it to HCI research and practice has meant that many systems developers have failed to benefit from the richness of this framework. The objective of this thesis was therefore to develop an Activity Theory based methodology for HCI research and practice. This thesis, contributes the `Activity-Oriented Design Methodology' (AODM) both as a practical and analytical methodology for using Activity Theory within HCI design. AODM incorporates four methodological tools namely:- The `Eight-Step-Model'- The `Activity Notation'- The technique of `Generating Research Questions'- The technique of `Mapping AODM Operational Processes'AODM tools were constructed from empirical work carried out as part of this research. Empirical analysis of work practices in two organisations was conducted for a period of two years using Activity Theory. This empirical work formed the basis for validating AODM. AODM tools support the systems design processes of gathering, analysing and communicating (through modelling) research and design insights from an Activity Theory perspective. It is argued that AODM provides a valuable practical and analytical methodology for operationalising Activity Theory within HCI so as to support early phases of systems design: namely, requirements capture and evaluation