Clase Dr Sergio Uribe

1. User Information for Designers:
A Visual Research Package
Anu Antikainen Mirja Kälviäinen Hugh Miller
The Kuopio Academy of Design The Kuopio Academy of Design The Nottingham Trent University
PL 98, 70101 PL 98, 70101 Burton Street
Kuopio, Finland Kuopio, Finland Nottingham NG3 5DY, UK
+358 (0)17 308135 +358 (0)17 308201 +44 (0)115 848 5550
anu.antikainen@designkuopio.fi mirja.kalviainen@designkuopio.fi hugh.miller@ntu.ac.uk
ABSTRACT developed by Pieter Jan Stappers at TUDelft, has been to use
In this paper, we describe the development of a flexible, visually- multidimensional scaling to present complex characteristics of
based on-line package, based on free sorting and multi- products to consumers, and to allow them to manipulate the
dimensional scaling to help designers research users’ emotional displays to emphasise those dimensions that interested them most
and social responses to designed objects. [8]. The approach of presenting complex information in visual,
preferably user-manipulable ways has been promoted by
researchers like Ben Shneiderman [7], and consultancies like
Categories and Subject Descriptors Doblin, with ‘innovation landscapes’ [2].
H.1.2 [Information Systems]: User-Machine Systems – human
factors. The multidimensional scaling approach used in the chair research
was evaluated by small design companies in Finland, who were
General Terms: Human Factors asked if they could see ways of using this technique in their
design process [5]. We found that designers felt comfortable with
Keywords: Design and emotion, visual research, the kind of pictures the research produced. An analysis which
multidimensional scaling, on-line methods gave them groups of pictures with different explanations of how
the users saw them was useful from their point of view, and they
could also see how such a presentation might be valuable in
1. INTRODUCTION discussing designs with management and with outside suppliers.
Designed objects have a social and emotional impact on
consumer’s lives, and researchers have tried to find ways of The present paper describes how the grouping method has been
researching and describing these impacts. Approaches range from developed further and combined with other supporting methods to
considering ways of characterising the personalities of objects [4], form a consistent software package that can serve researchers
through using morphological analysis to find those ‘form working with companies and in educational use. We set out to
elements’ that are associated with certain aspects of the object [1, present information in a visual, easily manipulated, exploratory
3], to calculating numerical indices that indicate how the elements way: a way which corresponds with the way that designers like to
of an object convey certain qualities [9]. Understanding how work. There are limitations in using purely pictorial
objects are perceived by users should be helpful in the design representations of physical objects, but it makes for a quick and
process for producing enjoyable objects, but such research is often easy presentation method, and designers we spoke to, who often
conducted after the design process is finished, and may produce work with visual sketches in the early stages of developing a
rather abstract results, often verbally- or numerically-based, rather project, found it an acceptable approach. The results can be used
than visual. either as a practical support for designers and marketing personnel
in a company or to increase general understanding of users. This
A visual research package for design development and marketing
paper describes our intentions in developing this package. Once it
research is being built by The Kuopio Academy of Design, based
is complete, in fall 2003, we hope to go on to evaluate its
on a method developed for evaluating chair designs by Hugh
usefulness to small design companies.
Miller and Mirja Kälviäinen [6]. The method of grouping items,
based on free-sorting and multi-dimensional scaling, was intended 2. THE VISUAL RESEARCH PACKAGE
to produce holistic, user-centred accounts of both social and
design aspects of the objects. A complementary approach, DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
2.1 Aims
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for The aim is to develop a tool which can obtain useful information
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are to support the design process as well as other functions in a
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that company. The advantages are flexibility in designing research and
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy speed in collecting and analysing data from a large number of
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, respondents globally. Consequently time and financial resources
requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. are saved compared to the manual process used in the original
DPPI’03, June 23-26, 2003, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Copyright 2003 ACM 1-58113-652-8/03/0006…$5.00.
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2. research. However, the software is not replacing personal user with the combining version of grouping (i.e. finding out the order
research, but aims at giving supplementary information to of preference in the ‘I would buy – would not buy’ example).
designers and marketers that can be both qualitative and The semantic differential method in the traditional form can also
quantitative. be used visually. The respondent is asked to set one to three
Starting in fall 2001, The Kuopio Academy of Design started a pictures of, for example, products on a scale between a pair of
design-based EU-funded project titled Muotoiluparkki. One of the words. This method is particularly useful when more accurate
project aims was to develop the new software, with the active information from selected items is wanted after the grouping
cooperation of the Lahti Design Research Institute, which method.
operates as a research consultant in design and user research. It is Multiple choice can be used with words or with pictures. Verbal
intended that the project will be finished by the end of 2003. questions can be used, for example, in collecting background
information. Free text is used mainly as a supportive method, and
2.2 Components Of The Software Package could be used in other forms such as in a story-telling method,
Although the software package under development is based on the
which might be seen as a useful additional research method in
grouping method, other approaches like semantic differential,
some cases.
multiple choice and free text have been added to make a more
flexible research tool. Combining a variety of techniques gives the To briefly illustrate the application of the methods, short
advantage of gaining results from various different perspectives. descriptions of practical company cases that we used in
However, the grouping method is the primary research method developing the package are presented. These are being used
and is thus generally used first. throughout the development process to improve the package.
This method has been modified into several different versions to 2.3 The Furniture Company Case
match different research settings (figure 1). The free sorting A Finnish furniture company has a large variety of products. One
method using to a supplied theme or question is best applied to of their important product lines is sofas. To gain further
gain information of product categorisations or to position a information of their market position and different consumer
chosen product among other products in the market. In all forms groups’ taste they wanted to do research on their and competitors
of grouping respondents are usually asked to describe their products by grouping. In addition, new product prototypes under
choices after grouping items, which can be pictures or words. development are being included in the study (figure 2).
A second version of grouping is called combining, in which there
is one or several predetermined groups where the given items are
placed. The respondent has freedom to place items into the
groups, or to leave some items aside. A practical application could
be to study which products are appealing (i.e. a box titled ‘I
would buy’) and undesirable (i.e. ‘I would not buy). Alternatively
a selection of descriptive words can be offered as items to be
combined with two to four product (or other visual) pictures,
which can be either prototypes or finalised products. Finally
grouping can be arranged in a scale form, which resembles the
semantic differential method.
Organise the given pictures Move products you would buy and
according to their potential users would not buy into the boxes
below
Figure 2: Free sorting
Organise the given products on the
pleasing – unpleasing scale
2.4 The Wooden Cutlery Case
A Finnish wood processing company had invented a unique
automated cutting mechanism, which enables all kinds of forms to
Pleasing Unpleasing be shaped from wood. As a challenging test product the company
decided to try producing a set of wooden cutlery. The visual
Figure 1: Three versions of grouping; grouping freely, research package was used to study what are the general attitudes
combining, and scale form towards wood as a material for cutlery and how wood associates
with cooking and eating. Research questions include, for example,
how wooden cutlery relates to steel, silver and plastic, and what
Two opposing verbal definitions are set on two ends of the screen are the ideal user environments (figures 3 and 4).
and the respondent arranges pictures on a scale or space between
them. This way the information gained is more precise compared
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3. Figure 5: The visual research on emotions linked to the
bathroom. After grouping the respondents are asked to
describe the emotions that are linked to the pictures
Figure 3: Grouping by combining is used to find out the most
pleasing and displeasing fork forms
3. PRESENTATION OF RESULTS
The results that are produced are presented in a form that is visual
and easy to approach and work with. Each picture can be enlarged
on the result screens. A package that is visual, flexible and
provides a multiple way of presenting results should be easy for
designers to approach and use in their visual work as opposed to
the traditional, verbal or numerical research results. Interviews
with designers have confirmed a need for these features [5].
The first screen of results from the grouping task is presented as a
confusion matrix (figure 6). It simply shows how often each
example has been grouped with each other example. The
confusion matrix is an easy way to gain an overall picture of the
results. However, other ways of presenting results are necessary to
gain a more accurate view of general meanings behind groupings
and meanings connected to individual groups.
After viewing the confusion matrix the researcher has a choice of
proceeding to either a two-dimensional plot formed when the
confusion matrix is subjected to a multidimensional scaling
analysis, or a network view that presents interlinkages between
Figure 4: Grouping by combining is used to study a suitable different items. In the two-dimensional plot the dimensions are
environment for wooden cutlery. given meanings by using the descriptions that arise from the
grouping results as Miller and Kälviäinen [6] did in their study of
chairs (Figure 7). The constrained sort can be analysed in the
2.5 Study of Emotions Linked to the same way. The visual scale shows small thumbnail pictures of the
items studied. Explaining words or codes can be added to the
Bathroom thumbnails. The results are read from the distances to other items
Ido Bathrooms produces bathroom furnishing. The company was
and the dimensions.
interested in finding out about real and dreamt emotions people
link to their bathrooms. This information is intended to assist the The results can also be presented as a network display (figure 8).
designer in his design process: the results will be part of his Any item from the confusion matrix or the two-dimensional plot
design brief. The study took two approaches: one which can be selected as the centre of the display. Items which were
approaches emotions with a set of pictures such as buildings and frequently grouped with that one will appear clustered round it,
texture that are meant to match with emotions linked to the with less-frequently chosen items a little further away. Selecting
bathroom (figure 5), and another which aims at arising emotions any item will move it to the middle of the screen, with an
through pictures presenting situations and actions. appropriate rearrangement of the others. The same presentation
can be used for the words used to describe the groupings.
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4. Figure 6: The confusion matrix. The information is presented in numbers and different colours and shades.
The stronger the shade, the more often the two examples were grouped together.
Figure 7: Example of a two dimensional plot
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5. Results from the traditional form of semantic differential can be developing the package is that whenever users’ visual
viewed on a screen similar to the one used for gathering the impressions are sought and two dimensional visual material is
data. Additionally two scales can be combined to form a two sufficient, the visual research package could be applied.
dimensional graphic, where the items are presented as
thumbnails. 5. REFERENCES
[1] Chuang, M-C. and Ma, Y-C., 2001, Expressing the
Generally the results can be read in a flexible way. Clicking any
expected product images in product design of micro-
of the items in the result screens can fetch access to individual
electronic products. International Journal of Industrial
explanations. Also access to individual questionnaires or other
Ergonomics, 27, pp. 233-245
results concerning each item can be opened directly from the
different screens. Everyone using the results of a certain research [2] Doblin, 2003 Innovation Landscapes: Visualizing
can gather and save an individual collection of results in a Innovation Available at
personal file. http://www.doblin.com/landscapes/index.html
The visual research package aims to be a conceptual and [3] Hsiao, S-W. and Chen, C-H., 1997, A semantic and shape
exploratory tool that supports the work of designers and grammar based approach for product design. Design
marketing people in a company. In addition the results can aid Studies, 18, pp. 275-296
discussion between designers, managers, and clients during the [4] Janlert, L-E. and Stolterman, E, 1997, The Character of
product development process. Things. Design Studies, 18, pp. 297-314.
[5] Kälviäinen, M. and Miller, H., in press, Researching Users’
Understanding of Products: An On-line Tool. In
McDonagh, D., Hekkert, P., Gyi, D. and van Erp, J. (2003)
Design and Emotion, Episode III: The Design of Everyday
Things London: Taylor and Francis
[6] Miller, H. and Kälviäinen, M., 2001, Objects for an
Enjoyable Life: Social and Design Aspects. In Proceedings
of the International Conference on Affective Human
Factors Design (Singapore), edited by Helander, M.,
Khalid, H. M. and Ming Po, T. (London: Asean Academic
Press), pp. 487-494.
[7] Shneiderman, B., 1999 Dynamic queries, starfield displays,
Figure 8: Example of a network display and the path to Spotfire Available at
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/spotfire/
[8] Stappers,P.J, Pasman,G. and Groenen, P.J.F., 2000,
4. CONCLUSIONS Exploring databases for taste or inspiration with interactive
The practical examples discussed above show how the visual multi-dimensional scaling Proceedings of IEA 2000/HFES
research package can be used in various applications. The 2000 Ergonomics for the new Millenium San Diego July-
development process of the visual research package is still under August 2000, pp 3.575-3.578. Available at
way, so the content presented here may change during the http://studiolab.io.tudelft.nl/gems/mdsi/MDSIPaeprIEA.pdf
process. Commercial and cooperative company cases are being There is more information at
used throughout the project. Some interesting cases are product http://studiolab.io.tudelft.nl/mdsi/
development for a multinational corporation, the development [9] Veryzer, R. W., 1997, Measuring Consumer perceptions in
project for a new travelling vehicle, and an image study of the the Product Development Process. Design Management
Kuopio soccer team corporate identity. The guiding idea in Journal, 8, pp. 66-71.
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