Towards User - Centred Design: A Method Development Project in a Product Design Consultancy

While user-centered design (UCD) methods have been utilized in the industrial design practice for new product development to discover the latent needs of people, there remain limitations of applying UCD methods to the design process. With limited time and resources, industrial designers’ complex role to deal with multiple aspects of a product limits access to users. While translating research findings into concepts is a challenge to designers, their ideation processes are unstructured and ambiguous, and this mystical approach could negatively affect the success of new product development. The experience matrix is proposed as a structured ideation tool to guide designers ideating from user experience viewpoints. By examining user activities, product components, and operation environments as major elements comprising the design space, designers can frame problems and generate concepts effectively and systematically. The construct and procedure of the experience matrix are explained through its application to an industrial design project.

This proposed Conference paper which emphasis on Intellectual property rights defines as: “The rights given to people over the creation of their minds” (Fred Warshofsky: Intellectual property, John Willey and Sons, 1994, p5). The researchers will focus on Historical Background ,development of Intellectual property , patent, importance and significance, research problem, research methodology, research contents, findings and recommendations. The Historical background and development to industrial intellectual property patent and design act refers to the pioneer International Convention ; 1883 which held in Paris it assumed as bed rock and foundation to whole industrial rights as amended and revised in 1979, Patent Cooperation Treaty, 1970 and Model Law for developing Countries on Marks, Trade Names and Act of unfair Competition, WIPO, 1958, then Strasbourg Agreement Concerning International Patent Classification, 1971. In addition to other International Conventions and national Acts that protecting and organizing industrial intellectual Property and Patent rights Provisions .The Characteristics and main Features of Intellectual Industrial Property :From the above mentioned definition which reflects the apparent characteristics of (I.P) to be two types such as follows: 1)The unpreceded discoveries either in the area of newly discoveries pertaining manufacturing of new models of cars ,refrigerators ,televisions ,airplane ,etc….2)specific trade marks or design recognizing the quality of apparatus manufactured ,e.g: milk, ceiling fan, motor or fashion of clothes .The significance and Importance of the forgoing paper may appears in: (i) exposition and highlighting the International and national legal systems that concerning with the protection of intellectual property and patent’s rights. (ii) It gives key and pre-requisite to protection that given to the authors rights patent and new discovery in the field of applied sciences. (iii) It explores the essentials that tackled to patents, industrial design and ownership of copyrights. For the research Problem: It might respond to such presumed questions: (i) What is the scope of industrial intellectual property? (ii) What are the international organizations that concern to protect patent, trademarks, trade secrets and industrial designs? (iii) What is the patent and ordained procedures that requested for its registration? (iv) Describe the copy right and designs which are protected by Law provisions (v) classify the classes of infringements to industrial and intellectual properties and which: are the prescribed the criminal and civil remedies: The research Methods that adopted: According to on going conference paper the researchers intend to adopt inductive analytical comparative research methodology. Literature Review: There are various masters, Ph.D Thesis and researchers contribution in this context such as: (i) Salwa Jameel Ahmed: Al-Himayt Aljnayiat Li Al-milkyat Al-fikryyah, Ph.D thesis, Ain Shumsh University (2015). (ii) Jide Babafemi: Intellectual Property the Law and Practice of Copyright, Trade marks, Patent and Industrial Design in Nigeria, 1st Edition, Justin Books Limited, Ibadan, Oyo, Nigeria (2007) (iii) Vinod V. Spole: Managing Intellectual Property: the strategic imperative, 3rd edition, PHI Learning private Limited, New Delhi (2012). Our proposed conference paper is similar with these works but it defers because it focused on Emirates Laws. The Contents of the Paper: It is primary concentrates on: (i) Definition of Industrial intellectual property, it’s features and significance (ii) Patent Protection base on Emirates Laws (iii) Criminal and Civil Protection to copy right and industrial design pursuit to Emirates Laws. (iv) Judicial precedents on industrial and Patent protection with reference to Emirates Laws

In H. G. Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau, the sinister doctor grows bizarre creatures of flesh and bone to further his vast and evil ambitions. In Isaac Asimov's world of the near future, robots manufactured from metals and polymers are governed by rational principles and serve their human masters for more domestic reasons. In our own age we have the means to construct entities as outlandish as Moreau's and as helpful as Asimov's, made up of hardware, software and the engaged human mind. These new organisms are not motivated by an external spark or by a set of self-contained algorithms. They are animated by the direct involvement of a person or community and by human knowledge stored, accessed and shared. We are the ghost in the web machine. A website's information architecture (IA) is the framework, the skeleton upon which the whole organism of the site stands up. IA gives a site its articulation and therefore its potential to grow into whatever sort of thing it will be. A good IA can be simple and elegant, or complex and engaging. A bad or accidental IA could resemble something that lumbered out of a mad scientist's vat. Digital libraries are often grown over time out of perfectly good but originally unrelated pieces and are particularly at risk of becoming Moreauvian nightmares. To avoid such mistakes you need a good plan and a well-considered approach. IA methodology will give you the blueprints for building a much better digital library. Since the human mind animates the website, the user must be at the center of the web design process. And since design products have to move back and forth during their creation among a number of people—design team members, stakeholders, end users and developers—the web design process should be iterative. User-centered design (UCD) brings representatives from all concerned parties into the process, and iteration allows design to be refined from broad to finely detailed. These methods also help the team figure out which tasks are important to a particular project, get buy-in where needed, creatively manage the tricky parts that come up and roll out a successful web application or site. Navigation, labels and information organization Interactions between user and different parts of the website Relationships between the site and other objects in its environment (search engines, other sites that can contribute or use digital library information, enterprise-wide navigation and more) IA uses user-centered design practices in conjunction with other methods to arrive at these blueprints. An upcoming LITA guide (http://www.lita.org/) showcases projects that apply user-centered design techniques to improve public and special library websites. Edited by Tom Lehman and Terry Nikkel, Making Library Websites Usable, will offer methodologies and case studies to put powerful tools into the right hands. I contributed a case study describing a website redesign for a corporate knowledge services department. As I organized my thoughts for that article I saw that most problems were not unique to digital libraries or knowledge services organizations. Also, the UCD and IA practices we followed can be applied to any complex information space. However, two issues emerged that do pertain specifically to digital libraries. They are designing good interfaces for lists and crafting the user experience when target objects lie outside the digital library. Digital library listings follow various models. Some look like Google results pages. Some replicate card catalogs. Others are bulleted lists or tables. In each case the person designing the list interface has to select which attributes to display for each information object. This decision should not be primarily technological (“all these fields are available in the database, so let's show them”) nor even a cultural one (“we're used to seeing bulleted lists, so we'll do it that way”). Rather, the design should revolve around the user's situation and tasks. The key to designing a useful digital library listing lies in understanding which combination of attributes will help your audience find the resources they're looking for. UCD techniques are effective means to gaining this understanding. The IA challenge is then to arrange an optimal layout and navigation of digital library listings so users can find the resources they need. Imagine you're browsing the magazine racks at your favorite local bookstore. You reach out to pick up an issue of Sunset magazine. You don't expect to find yourself suddenly transported to the publisher's offices in Menlo Park, California. You count on staying right there in the bookstore—otherwise you'd find yourself stumped if what you really needed was a copy of Wired. When browsing in a digital library, the work you ultimately wish to reach might reside anywhere. It may be inside the current collection or somewhere else on the corporate intranet, or it could be behind the login page of a service to which your digital library subscribes. The link you see in the listing might be a link to the thing itself or it might be a jump-off page for yet another digital library with its own navigation scheme and listing style. What lies beyond your home digital library page is an unpredictable and generally frustrating treasure hunt. How do we design the user experience to include smooth transitions between the digital library home page, a filtered list of results and the new interface that may arise when clicking through? Should we—or can we—bring target objects into the sphere of our own digital library? Can we subsume subscription login under the corporate or library login? Or must users be on their own once they reach for certain sorts of information objects? And if they must, how do we ease the path for them? These questions arise out of a user-centered design approach and move us some distance towards a workable solution. But until service-oriented architectures are widely in place, workarounds need to start with a square look at the problem. Each design team must proceed to make considered decisions on how best to smooth the way for their users. Websites are becoming more responsive to the impulses of individuals and communities. The best-behaved sites react to users' actions in natural ways. They anticipate needs in a non-intrusive manner, play nicely with other web and non-web tools, let users do interactive things like add and tag content and work collaboratively in groups, and don't force users into awkward positions in order to work with the site. People are coming to expect websites to be shaped to fit them, and digital libraries need to live up to this promise. Fortunately, with information architecture methodologies, a user-centered design approach and sensible project management, you have the tools to build fully articulated frameworks for all kinds of web creations. All that remains to animate your site is the spark of your inspiration—and the eager participation of your delighted users.

In this case study, we demonstrate how user-centered design techniques can enhance the introduction of documents into electronic commerce. A finance company, in order to compete on value rather than rate, sought to develop an electronic system for automobile financing. User-centered design principles and techniques were used to separate the fundamental business process from the supporting information process. Rather than simply reproducing the associated paper documents in the new information process, these techniques enabled us to craft electronic documents that achieved the customer's goals, while still meeting legal and business process requirements. We also employed the power of electronic documents to significantly increase accuracy and completeness.

The role of design and designers in new product development (NPD) has always been problematic and complex in its approach and in the extent of its involvement (Leenders et al., 2007; Murray and O’Driscoll, 1996; Veryzer and Borja de Mozota, 2005). As the industrial design profession seeks to confront the challenges of a recessionary environment, both the designer led ‘intuitive’ approach to NPD, and the marketer led ‘systematic’ approach become outmoded (Cross, 2001; Martin, 2007). There is shortcoming, even ambivalence, in the NPD and design management literature as to how design is involved in NPD (Cooper et al., 2003; Olson et al., 1998). Perks et al. (2005) suggest the designer’s involvement is moving from merely functional expertise to broader leadership activities. The research reported in this paper seeks to contextualise the fledgling position of design as NPD leader, and to understand the nature and level of design and designer involvement in NPD. Using a case study approach, the researchers sought to investigate these issues in Ireland’s largest industrial design consultancy. The firm, established 25 years ago, employs 30 design professionals. It handles projects for a range of well-known, international clients in mature, consumer product categories, for example, Palm, Terraillon and Logitech. The lead researcher spent six weeks embedded in the firm in summer 2009, carrying out quasi-ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with designers and management. Further interviews were conducted at the European studio of an international consultancy to enable a broader comparison. The firm was found to be in a period of flux, moving from a situation where the client called the shots, often based on uni-dimensional market research, towards one where the design studio sought to win greater involvement in NPD. A studio in such a predicament has yet to be empirically examined in the literature. Reorientation from a passive, and often late, role in NPD towards one of fuller leadership and greater input is a central feature of this research. A significant amount of conventional design work was gradually gravitating towards business analysis and marketing conceptualisation. Designers engaged in a high level of analysis on product, user and brand, and offered direction to clients through a range of activities. In many regards, they embraced the language and craft of the marketer. The company’s new mantra was to “manifest our clients’ brand through great product design”. This shift marks the division between the designer’s role as a mere service provider versus design authority. The extent to which leadership could be successfully offered depended, in a large part, on the relationship between designer and client. This relationship determined the extent and timing of involvement of designers in NPD. Different types and intensities of relationships were observed. For example, constant dyadic communication facilitated intense relationships where typical design briefs were extremely informal. However, an asymmetry in consultancy-client relationship, provoking vulnerability and internal tension, was uncovered. This revealed the transitional ground that the studio currently inhabits. This study charts in detail a move by a well-established design consultancy to take greater ‘ownership’ of NPD. In shaping this process, the constellation of the designer-client relationship is critical. A model of designer-client involvement in NPD, hinging around project classification and designer input, is developed. This model is predicated on three important insights from the research: (i) a broadened designer remit; (ii) extensive and early NPD involvement on the part of designers; and (iii) increased ownership of the NPD process by the consultancy designers. As the design profession transitions, as designers increasingly sell a greater range of expertise and provide greater value to clients, it is suggested that the model provides relevant insight to both design consultancies and client firms in the NPD process.

Leveraging on Work Integrated Learning to Enhance Sustainable Design Practices in the Construction Industry

In this benchmark study, we seek to identify strategies, operating practices, and philosophies employed by some of today's best-regarded industrial design consultancy firms in both the USA and Europe. In addition, we attempt to map important trends in the field of design. To reach our objectives we compare the design practice of design consultancy firms with a strong reputation and highly esteemed client base with competitors lacking these assets. In total, we interviewed 50 well-regarded and little-known industrial design firms operating in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA. Additional information was obtained by interviewing clients of professional design services and industry experts. The findings of our benchmark study indicate that design consultancy firms face new competitive challenges, among other things, due to convergence of related markets, the challenges of the globalization process and the influence of new information and communication technologies that allow firms to exploit economies of scale and scope. Our research further identified six factors that seem critical for success in present-day design consultancy, namely being a full design service provider or niche player, maintaining excellent long-term client relationships and achieving customer satisfaction, having an entrepreneurial attitude, having an interdisciplinary and multicultural orientation, maintaining a strong focus on building and sustaining an excellent image and finally engaging in a cycle of continuous learning.

The Food & Beverage (F&B) industry in Indonesia is growing rapidly, yet many mobile applications still fail to deliver an optimal user experience (UX) due to unintuitive user interface (UI) designs, inefficient ordering systems, and lack of integrated payment methods. These issues negatively impact user satisfaction and application usability. This study aims to design the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of a mobile food & beverage application that meets user needs, accommodates industry expectations, and is evaluated for effectiveness using the User-Centered Design (UCD) approach. The research employed the UCD methodology, involving user interviews, persona development, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing. The evaluation was conducted using the System Usability Scale (SUS) with 15 respondents. The results show that the prototype of the “KuliNow” application achieved an average SUS score of 84, categorized as “Excellent.” Key features include integrated mobile banking payments, direct communication with restaurants, social media integration, pre-order functionality, efficient order management, and a reliable review and rating system. This study demonstrates that the UCD approach is effective in developing intuitive, user-focused mobile applications.

With the growing awareness to learn deeper about Islam and Quran, there is an increasing trend to learn the Arabic language in Indonesia. While many institutions offer onsite learning platform to learn Arabic, the need for technology-based e-learning Arabic course is increasing as technology in Indonesia advances. The e-learning approach has to be based upon the needs of users to ensure the learning is effective. This study aims to design an online e-learning basic Arabic course using user-centered design (UCD) approach. The methodology employed in this study is mixed methods. The study covers requirements gathering, create design solution, prototyping, and evaluation. Gagne's nine instructional events are used as a theoretical basis for designing Instructional design. Evaluation is done by referring to usability testing method. This study results in an e-learning Arabic course interface that stemmed from user needs and instructional design. The final output has 17 features out of 34 identified user needs.

In architecture and industrial design, the concept of style plays a major role in education as a way of explaining the historical inheritance and comparing alternative design expressions.In this article we claim that interaction design can benefit greatly from an understanding of the concept of style. It can provide designers with strong visions and a sense of direction in designing new interfaces. In particular we focus on Solid User Interface design, i.e. products with small displays and a limited number of keys, because of the tight coupling between interaction and industrial design.The authors share the concern that interaction designers in enthusiasm with new technologies fail to preserve the qualities of use from products with outdated technologies.This paper attempts to formulate an aesthetics of interaction design and reports on experiments with introducing interaction style thinking in a user centred design practice in industry.

Objective Stroke survivors often face barriers to structured physical activity due to physical or cognitive limitations. A recent feasibility trial of the mobile health (mHealth) version of the i-REBOUND programme (Internet-delivered Rehabilitation for Exercise after stroke) showed that it was safe, well-accepted, and accessible, but findings also highlighted aspects of the exercise support needing improvement. This study aimed to refine the mHealth version of i-REBOUND using a structured user-centred design (UCD) approach, and addressing limitations identified in prior feasibility testing. Methods This study applied a collaborative design that followed a three-phase UCD process: (1) review and preparation, using feasibility study data to identify key areas for refinement; (2) define and devise, conducting digital workshops and interviews with stroke survivors ( n = 15) and physiotherapists ( n = 3) to explore experiences and needs; and (3) develop and test, iteratively prototyping and user-testing modified exercise content based on phase 2 findings. Results Key refinements included (1) expanding the exercise components to include a variety of exercises, including seated and hemiplegia specific options; (2) developing new instructional content with embedded explanations of exercise purpose and difficulty modifications; and (3) creating prescribed physiotherapist-led exercise components in the same format as the supervised classes, enabling a more time- and personnel-efficient yet personalised delivery of the programme. Conclusion The refinements, such as seated and hemiplegia-specific exercise options and on-demand physiotherapist-led sessions, highlight how tailored mHealth solutions can better meet the needs of diverse stroke survivors and support sustained engagement. The collaborative process also highlighted the value of early and continuous user involvement.

This chapter argues that design anthropology is coming of age as a separate (sub)discipline with its own concepts, methods, research practices, and practitioners, in short its own distinct style and practice of knowledge production. Design is a pervasive aspect of modern society with a large number of practitioners and a great range of subfields, such as industrial design, architecture, systems design, human-computer interaction design, service design, and strategic design and innovation. Design is a pervasive aspect of modern society with a large number of practitioners and a great range of subfields, such as industrial design, architecture, systems design, human-computer interaction design, service design, and strategic design and innovation. As the field of human-computer interaction design has expanded its scope beyond workplace studies and system development, the turn to values and experiences has occurred more generally within the field of human-computer interaction. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.

Precision agriculture provides important issues toward a more sustainable agriculture. Many farmers have the necessary technology to operate site-specifically, but they do not use it in practice, and thus available information and communications technology (ICT) systems are not used to their full potential. This paper addresses how to reduce the so-called “problem of implementation”, based on the knowledge that participatory approaches during the design and development process is one of the most important factors to frame technology adoption. The development of sustainable ICT systems through theories and methodologies from the fields of human computer interaction and user-centered design (UCD) is presented and an ongoing Swedish project for development of an agricultural decision support system (AgriDSS) for nitrogen fertilization is used as an example to frame the issue. The overreaching aim is to develop AgriDSSs that are sustainable in design as well as through design by stressing the importance of participatory approaches for the successful development of AgriDSSs. The Swedish project has the intention to apply a UCD approach, and some pitfalls on starting to use this way of working is identified as well as some suggestions on how to reduce them through co-learning processes. Despite the challenges presented in this paper, ICT can contribute significantly to long-term sustainable development. Thus, several competences and scientific disciplines need to act in concert to help develop a sustainable development of agriculture via a transdisciplinary approach that can make an impact on society at many levels.

During the practice of industrial design, digital methods are used to support the generation, development and specification of creative three dimensional (3D) form. Despite the increasing capabilities of digital methods, the distinctive nuances of current practice continue to use non-digital methods, particularly during the creative concept generation activities. This paper reports on a research project that combined emerging and established digital design technologies to define an approach for total 'Digital Industrial Design' (DID) that employs only digital methods (e.g. no pens/paper) with no post-process finishing (e.g. smoothing/painting of rapid prototype parts). The paper concludes that DID has the greatest potential for change and benefit during concept generation, where haptic feedback modelling and monochrome 3D printing have the capacity to replicate some of the qualities of tactile form-giving associated with workshop-based sketch modelling. To maximise impact, the case study was translated into in a web-based resource (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/lds/did/).

The focus of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is to generate an understanding of how people can best interact with computers, and then to design and build technologies and tools that facilitate that interaction. As a field, HCI draws on many disciplines and perspectives. The primary contributors have historically been psychology, computer science and human factors -- more recent entries include (among others) anthropology, communication, education, graphic and industrial design, linguistics, sociology, and systems science. The work being done in the HCI field is shifting rapidly in response to the influx of these new perspectives. A quick survey of the literature from the past ten years reveals some further trends, and even some unexpected paradoxes 1 . Much of the work reported focuses either on theory [8], or on practice [3], although in many cases, work moves from theory to implementation and evaluation [4]. Papers are usually either technology-based [7] or user-based [11], but there is also work that approaches HCI problems from both of these ends of the interaction spectrum [12].