“Smart home system is like a mother”: The potential and risks of using product metaphors to influence consumers’ comprehension of really new products

Driven by innovative technology, really new products (RNPs) incorporate new functions that provide significant benefits for consumers. But consumers often experience difficulty understanding RNPs, which hinders consumers’ further adoption. To facilitate consumers’ comprehension, the use of product metaphors in RNPs is a promising strategy because it relates a target RNP to a source product/concept familiar to consumers. By using knowledge from the familiar source, consumers could gain better comprehension of the RNP. However, product metaphors can also carry risks that hinder consumers’ comprehension of RNPs, such as consumers’ misidentification of the source and consumer’ inability to use the relevant knowledge to comprehend RNPs. This research investigates the potential and risks of using product metaphors in RNPs through a mixed-methods approach. Specifically, an experiment and in-depth interviews were conducted to examine the effects of product metaphors on consumers’ comprehension. Results revealed that consumers encounter difficulty in detecting the similarities between source concepts/products and target RNPs due to which product metaphors may not necessarily enhance consumers’ comprehension. Accompanying a product metaphor with a textual clue can help consumers to detect the similarities between source concepts/products and target RNPs, leading to enhanced consumers’ comprehension. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. <br

Furthering Victor Papanek's legacy: A personal perspective

Design schools around the world often state that they offer instruction on topics such as sustainability, inclusive design, and responsible design. Fifty years ago, design scholar Victor Papanek had already begun teaching industrial designers that they were contributing to consumerism by designing unnecessary gadgets. Papanek urged them to offer more responsible solutions to the real difficulties that people face daily, difficulties that spanned a range of problems from physical challenges to societal ones. His works were not appreciated—at all—by his American industrial designer contemporaries, but still served as powerful inspiration to European design academics whose efforts comprise some of the first PhD work on design. Here I describe Papanek's writing and inspiration, and note how long it took before influential design academics would seek to educate and inspire others based on his work. I have served as dean at three universities where his legacy lives on in teaching and research. I will reflect on some of the recent activities taking place under Papanek's influence at these institutions, and offer a personal perspective of these developments, and some reflections on the progress in light of Papanek's lessons overall

'Complexity in simplicity': the effects of visual complexity on consumers' comprehension of product innovations

Designers are frequently involved in embodying product innovations. It is challenging to embody really new products (RNPs) because consumers often have difficulty comprehending them. This study explores the value of visual complexity for designing RNPs. In study 1, an experiment was conducted (n = 77) to test the effects of visual complexity on consumers' comprehension of incrementally new products (INPs) and RNPs. The results revealed different effects for INPs and RNPs. Specifically, a more complex appearance triggers congruence with the functions of a RNP, which facilitates consumers' comprehension. For INPs, no effects for visual complexity were found. Based on the positive effect of visual simplicity on consumers' aesthetic response to product design, the design strategy 'complexity in simplicity' is proposed. In study 2, we asked experienced designers (n = 6) to apply this design strategy. Results showed that they can design RNPs using the 'complexity in simplicity' and possible ways to achieve this are explained

The holistic frame of designing smart, connected products: A systematic literature review and expert interview

With the transformation led by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the nature of product innovation has shifted from traditional physical products to smart products or Smart, Connected Product (SCP). There is not a comprehensive understanding of SCP since it is proposed in 2014. And, this is a new and unfamiliar arena for designers. To fill the gap in the research, a holistic frame of SCP was established based on explored product attributes through systematic literature review and expert interview. As a result, 20 attributes and 44 sub-attributes were obtained and classified into four clusters—Appearance, Function, Experience and Meaning. It explains the concepts and four capabilities of SCP, as well as guides designers’ practice on developing new ideas of SCP

A review of service design pedagogy to identify potential added value to product innovation in higher education

It is widely accepted that service design is a discipline that is becoming increasingly recognized as a key element for productive collaboration between multidisciplinary stakeholders. However, it is difficult to understand the interplay between service design and product innovation in higher education. There is a gap in the service design literature on how its way of teaching can enable better product innovation if introduced within product innovation degrees. This study seeks to explore how product innovation might be stimulated by service design teaching, with a focus on collaborative participant activities often used within the service design discipline. Previous studies on service design pedagogy have provided various frameworks for teaching service design that are often drawn from different disciplinary perspectives, such as engineering, social sciences, marketing, business, etc. This article, in contrast, examines service design pedagogy strategies applied in design education within the realm of product innovation. A bibliometric analysis method was adopted to review the existing literature. We found that the selected studies touched upon several themes, which all relate to collaboration among participants and stakeholders in service design and product innovation. The findings shed light on specific projects and case studies that were implemented via team collaboration. Further analysis proposes that the service design pedagogy in design education enhances product design via wider value considerations such as sustainability principles and methods. This study begins to illustrate how service design as a systemic approach to designing products might better enable product innovators to consider wider aspects of value co-creation and sustainability via explicitly involving and considering wider stakeholder networks beyond simply designing a product for a user.</p

Designing effective interventions to encourage older adults proactively participate in physical activity and promote sustainable behaviour change

Physical inactivity among older adults is a global health concern, necessitating effective interventions to promote physical activity and improve health outcomes. Literature related to intervention is reviewed, and key elements including theoretical foundations, scope, behaviour change strategies, and measurement methods were discussed. An intervention design proposal has been made that aims to encourage older adults proactively participate in physical activity and promote sustainable behaviour change. The intervention follows a bottom-up approach, incorporating participatory design principles and leveraging the social-cognitive theory. Design plays a significant role in the intervention design in order to make it more effective and sustainable. Future intervention design can follow a similar method to have a greater social impact.</p

Finding synergy between oral and visual narratives on memorable and meaningful tourism experiences

Personal technologies are widely used to capture the memorable and meaningful experiences travellers have during their journeys. These digital footprints serve as memorabilia for travellers to share and reminiscence about these special experiences. This study showcases an exploratory study of the creation of a travel diary from the traveller’s digital footprints to facilitate the expression of and reminiscences about memorable and meaningful moments. In this study, 15 participants were asked to share their memorable and meaningful travel experiences and were then instructed to use their photos and a set of prototyping tools to create a paper-based visual diary of their experiences. The goal of this study was to examine the process of creating a visual diary to understand the differences in how these experiences are recounted and the ways they are expressed. We used a Labovian approach to compare and contrast the participants’ oral narratives and visual diaries. As in comics studies, the visual diaries are analysed with respect to their spatio–temporal dimensions and the recurring patterns in these two narrative forms are discussed. Based on the results, recommendations are made regarding the future design of travel diary platforms