Martin G. Helander

We investigated the emotional intent of car buyers and designers in two related studies. The first study involved 179 Asian and European car owners from 10 countries who were interviewed in a survey. The results showed that several car design descriptors gave similar emotional associations in Europe and in Asia. Clearly, car owners look beyond functionality to consider emotional design features. The affective descriptors of the Asian sample were used in a second study involving seven car designers from an automotive company in mainland China. They were instructed to include affective features in their design of a car dashboard after first designing without instructions to include those features. The designers had no previous experience of affective car design, but the results revealed emotional changes to their design. It can be concluded that car designers may need to learn how to include emotional design features as a design procedure.

While it is often reported that collaboration in product design team is difficult because individuals bring with them their own language, terminology, perspectives and detailed knowledge, these claims rely on personal accounts and recollections. The lack of quantitative measures makes it challenging to identify individual-level differences and their influence on group-level behaviour. This paper presents a new method to measure the coherence of team communication at a linguistic level to ascertain the extent to which individuals share a common language and terminology. We then relate individual coherence to group performance in terms of collaboration process and design outcome. The research is based on a study of experienced product designers in China. The study shows that teams with high levels of semantic coherence between each participant and between each participant and the group are likely to have high quality collaboration processes. The team members’ high semantic coherence, however, is not strongly correlated to a high-quality design outcome.

Previous studies on consumption related affect did not identify specific components in the pre-purchase context. This article reviewed theoretical bases of affect and its relationship to product judgment and determined the components and structure of pre-purchase affect. Field studies were conducted to gather an initial list of affect experienced before purchasing “highinvolvement” products. An initial list of 94 pre-purchase affect was identified and trimmed down to 18 after further statistical analysis. A second study was conducted to determine the structure of the pre-purchase emotion set (PES) derived from the first study. Multidimensional scaling was used and four clusters of emotion were found labeled satisfaction, positive enthusiasm, optimism, and amazement. The same results were found using factor analysis. It was proposed that pre-purchase affect experience followed the human information processing model.

A coupled design is generally more difficult to use than an uncoupled design. It should therefore be replaced by an uncoupled design. The problem described in this paper is to identify sources of couplings and propose new design parameters that uncouple the design. A method based on Suh's axiomatic design (AD) was developed. There are two axioms in AD. The first axiom proclaims that design parameters should be selected so that functional requirements become independent. Based on this, a method for Human Factors Design was devised. It is called Design Equations for Systems Analysis (DESA). Several case studies of human factors design problems were analysed: a refrigerator, hand tools and a driver's compartment. As demonstrated in the case studies, DESA is useful for analysis of existing design solutions as well as for synthesis of new design alternatives. The second axiom in AD aims at minimizing information in design. It should be noted that this is in agreement with Hick's law and Fitts’ law. The calculation of information or entropy in design was demonstrated for an adjustable workstation. The second axiom was adapted to human factors design by taking into account the variability of human attributes, in this case anthropometric measures. If the manufacturer's supplied adjustability range and the users’ desired range are known, the entropy or information of an adjustable workstation can be quantified. In comparing several workstations, the workstation with the least information should be selected.

Coupling between user goals and user actions has an adverse effect on usability, because it increases the gulf of execution. Based on the principles of axiomatic design, a methodology was developed for identifying and suggesting avenues for eliminating such couplings. A model of a human–machine system is constructed using the following design domains: goal; functional; physical; and action. The mappings between these domains are represented using design equations, which provide a qualitative metric for characterizing the degree of coupling. The use of this methodology is illustrated using several examples, which show that coupling may exist between the goal and functional domains, the functional and physical domains or the physical and action domains. Different loci of coupling have different implications for design improvement. By providing a general and rational criterion, this formalized and analytical methodology has the potential to be a useful tool for design engineers during the early stages of design.

There is often a fundamental mismatch between the way human process knowledge and the way it is processed by technology support system for product design. It is needed to develop tools, methods and technology which integrate smoothly with the design process. In this paper, a cognitive model of knowledge processing is described. A cognitive knowledge modeling method is presented. Suggestions on cognitive support for knowledge based system are provided. Cognitive knowledge modeling will result in a natural integration of knowledge based systems into the design process.

The usability of the software system for capturing picture is important factor for the mobile phone's interface design, which will partly determine customers' appreciation of the value of the service. Review from a human factors perspective, there are various methods for evaluating usability. However, there are no definite criteria for testing the usability of mobile phone camera software systems. This study presents a new framework for usability testing based on a typical human information processing. Usability is classified into four dimensions for testing: perception, learning/memorization, control/action and evaluative feeling. Furthermore, the criteria for testing the four dimensions of usability are defined for mobile phone camera software systems. Three different camera mobile phones are studied and compared based on task analysis and evaluation of the criteria proposed for usability testing in this study. The usability problems of three mobile phone camera software systems are identified. Suggestions for usability improvement are presented