Style,Function,Interaction: Do Designers Disregard User-Product Interaction when Proposing Product Design Concepts?

Abstract

This paper reports an investigation of an industrial design project during the preliminary investigation and concept design stages. Conditions for the design project were established where some of the designers followed a more ‘user-centred’ approach to the design problem than others. It might have been expected that designers who were not adopting a user-centred approach would be more focussed on the visual appeal (style) or product technology aspects of their designs and might tend to disregard the interaction sequences involved in actual product use. It was found that designers in both groups resolved the ‘interaction design’ associated with the concepts to a similar level of detail. It was also found that the ‘user-centred’ designers did not tend to gather information on aesthetic issues when inquiring about end user requirements. The implications of these Findings for user-centred design methods are discussed.