The Design of a new NICU Patient Area: Combining Design for Usability and Design for Emotion

In the design of medical products both usability and emotional experience are important to be considered. Usability can enhance the work situation of medical staff and ensure patient safety. Emotion related product aspects, on the other hand, influence the recovery pace of patients as well as the work satisfaction of staff. For an optimal medical design both aspects should receive well-balanced attention during the design process. Usability and emotional experience are currently related in literature. However, about the relation between these two aspects in practical design projects little information is available. Therefore we will discuss the exploration of the practical relation between Design for Usability and Design for Emotion in a design process. We explored the relation during concurrent application of both design approaches to the design of a patient area for a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Our aim was not to develop a new design method, but to explore in practice how both design approaches could be addressed concurrently. This paper describes the applied design approach, its strength and weaknesses as well as the design results. Overall, the NICU design case has proven that the concurrent application of Design for Emotion and Design for Usability is feasible in practice and results in a satisfactory design. Keywords: Usability; Design For Emotion; Medical Appliance; Participatory Design; Case Study</p

Strategies to design for dynamic usability

Since usability is a property of the interaction between a product, a user and the task that he or she is trying to complete [6], a product’s usability can vary when it is used in varying use situations. We define this as dynamic usability. This study is aimed at exploring how practitioners currently deal with dynamic usability. From a retrospective case study research of three design projects different principles and strategies were formulated for dealing with dynamic use situations. In this paper we present solution principles that are applied to accommodate products to dynamic use situations and we discuss two design process issues with regard to dynamic usability, namely the information sources that are used to get insight in the use situations and the means by which designers try to get insight in the consequence of their design decisions with regard to future use situation

Participatory Scenario Generation: Communicating Usability Issues in Product Design through User Involvement in Scenario Generation\ud

Scenarios have proven to be a valuable tool in evaluating and communicating usability issues in consumer product design. Scenarios are explicit descriptions of hypothetical use situations. Realistic scenarios can serve as a valuable frame of reference to evaluate design solutions with regard to usability. To be able to achieve this required level of realism, involving users in scenario generation is essential. In this presentation we discuss how and where users can be involved in a scenario based product design process by means of examples of design projects that were executed by master students Industrial Design Engineering of the University of Twente. \ud \ud We distinguish direct and indirect scenario generation. In direct scenario generation the user is actively involved in a participatory scenario generation session: the scenarios are created together with users. Indirect scenario generation is an approach in which scenarios are created by designers based on common analysis techniques like observations and interviews. These scenarios are then offered to users for confirmation. Both types of user involvement in scenario generation can be aimed at either current use scenarios which describe the current situation or future use scenarios which include a new product design. \ud \ud The examples show that all strategies can be applied successfully to create realistic scenarios. Which strategy to choose depends among others upon risks and privacy issues, occurrence of infrequent events and availability of users. Furthermore, the variety of approaches shows that there is still a lot to explore with regard to benefits and limitations of the many techniques that can be applied in generating scenarios for consumer product design. We hope to contribute to this field by means of the research in our group and the work of students in the SBPD course\u

Design and evaluation of a new generation fuel efficiency support tool

An effective way to reduce fuel consumption in the short run is to induce a change in driver behaviour. In this project, a new-generation fuel-efficiency support tool has been designed. The support tool includes a normative model that formulates optimal driver behavior minimising fuel consumption. If actual behaviour deviates from this optimal behaviour, the support tool presents advice to the driver on how to change driver behaviour. Evaluation of the new support tool by means of a driving simulator experiment revealed that drivers were able to reduce fuel consumption by 16% compared with ‘normal driving’ and by 7% compared with driving fuel-efficiently without support. Within the urban environment, reductions of up to 23% were found. In addition the new support tool was evaluated with regard to secondary effects

Designing for Dynamic Usability: Development of a Design Method that Supports Designing Products for Dynamic Use situations

Ease of use or usability is gaining ground as a selling argument. However, designing usable consumer products still remains a complicated activity, particularly when products will be used in changing circumstances. The usability of a product is defined by ISO 9241 as the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. From this definition can be concluded that a product’s usability depends on the situation in which it is used and that this situation should be specified. However, more and more products are used by varying users, for varying purposes and/ or in varying contexts of use, for instance a vending machine or a mobile phone. These types of products therefore have a varying or dynamic usability. This variation can take place on different levels: within a use session, between use sessions or between products. The means by which a product can be adjusted to this variation or ‘dynamic use situation’ depends on the variation level. Products with dynamic use situations are difficult to design with regard to usability because it is difficult - if not impossible - to predict all situations a product will meet. Moreover, requirements from different use situations can conflict. In this paper we will elaborate on the principle of dynamic use situations by means of an example. Furthermore we will discuss the need for the development of a design method that supports designers in dealing with dynamic use situations. For that purpose we propose criteria the method should meet. Besides aiming at creating solutions these criteria include the analysis and prioritizing of use situation aspects as well as an evaluation in which these aspects are integrated. We believe scenarios can be a valuable tool in this proces