DFG project “NEPTUN GeP – User, product and environmental influences on usability and emotional product design” started on 01.05.2023
While the functionality of a product is often taken for granted nowadays, good usability (i.e. simple, effective and efficient product use) and emotionally appealing product design (i.e. satisfaction, aesthetics and emotional fulfilment) are important components of the user experience. However, usability and emotionality usually cannot be considered equally, as the associated product requirements are often accompanied by inherent conflicting goals. In addition to these conflicting goals, external factors such as product, user or environmental characteristics also influence the user experience. Yet, in order to be able to make a user-oriented decision in this context, reliable knowledge is needed, as to whether the emotional design or the usability is perceived as more important from the user’s point of view, so that the more important aspect can be focused on. Otherwise, insufficient consideration of customer preferences can lead to product rejection. In order to avoid this, it is therefore necessary to find out which factors influence emotional product design or usability and how their relationship must be taken into account in the respective context of use. Hence, the aim of this research project is to explore a method for considering specific user, product and environmental characteristics as external influencing factors on the weighting of usability and emotional product design in order to cope with conflicting design decisions in the field of tension of dual user integration. The results from the first phase WA 2913/32-1 of the project are also taken into account, which already provide important insights into the coupled consideration of usability and emotional product design. The aim is to extend these findings to include a detailed examination of external influences and to operationalize these research results for the engineering design domain. In summary, at the end of this research project, we have identified and investigated influencing factors and a method for taking these into account in the context of weighting usability and emotional product design.