CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Mapping the User-Product Relationship (in Product Design)

The Usability Professional is more and more consulted in the design process. This process traditionally is focused on creating reliable and technical high-quality products. Due to developments in production quality these aspects are no longer a distinguishing characteristic. Nowadays nearly all products are of reasonable quality. Thus functionality and usability become more important. Another trend is the growing application of microchips in a wide range of products. This results in an almost unlimited amount of features. The counterpart of this trend is the fact that products become more difficult to use. Therefore usability can distinguish a product from its competitors. But why map the user-product relationship? Designers are taking up the challenge of designing products that can be experienced by their owners (Overbeeke and Hekkert 1999). Product managers and marketers are confronted with the ‘heart and mind conflict’ in the decision making of the buyers of their products (Shiv and Fedorikhin 1999). Mass customisation is a trend in business (Kotler 1999; Pine and Gilmore 1999) This means products should be adapted to the customers needs. Our company, P5, as usability professionals, translate these needs in order to inform both designers and product managers. Usability is—according to its definition— mainly focused on how people use the product. It concerns the interaction between user and product. But mapping the user-product interaction is no longer enough to understand all the consumers needs and to inform the designers and product managers satisfactorily. Mapping the user-product relationship will become an important additional tool in P5’s toolbox. In this paper we describe our quest to find the right methods to get more insight in this relationship.