Product Development
In Product Development, the lab provides design, research and testing via the use of both objective and subjective methods of measurement. Working across broad product types, their consulting work includes acoustical performance, AV media performance, visual performance, thermal comfort performance, and subjective research and measurement. With a focus on perceptual comfort, design clarity, satisfaction and preference as user experience benchmarks, Orfield works in Sound Quality, Visual Quality, Human Factors Quality, Usability Quality, Vibrational Quality, Tactile Quality, etc.
Theory and Practice
Product design must be about great user experience, which can be determined through modeling, measurement and testing. Human perception can be a negative or positive filter for user experience. And productivity, satisfaction and complaints are most commonly associated with the perceptual and human factors side of product design. Products that are visually clear, easy to use, are perceptually quiet, have comfortable thermal characteristics and don't impact indoor air quality, generate far more positive user response and far fewer complaints.
Specialities
In the product development field, we consult on many product types including appliances, vehicles, audio-visual systems, medical products, aircraft, tools, lawn products, consumer electronics, etc. With a specialty in human perception, we approach each of these product types with a special focus on human comfort, performance and preference. Many of our product projects have been published. We founded the first sound quality collaboration worldwide, the Sound Quality Working Group (SQWG),. We have convened over 20 international SQWG sound quality conferences at Orfield Labs as lecture and workshop experiences, and we continue to design custom training for our clients.
Orfield Labs has a specialty in perceptual and cognitive disabilities, and their application to the newer field of perceptual and cognitive universal design. We have a strong interest in products in the disability field, including aging, autism, ADHD, mental illness, PTSD, SPD, blindness and deafness, and we have developed a complex process and practice of perceptual design for products and environments.
Philosophy
It is our belief that clients and design teams can complete exceptional product development in normal budget ranges if the focus is on the user, and the budgets favor this focus. Excellent products result from deep knowledge and the application of high-end research and design processes. This can be done within limited budgets. And since many parts of product design can be virtual in the visual and auditory domain, budgets can often be reduced dramatically from normal budgets as validation can occur before repeated prototyping of the products at different stages. This can also save substantial time as virtual consulting is far more efficiently accomplished.
Summary
Whether our product development clients are looking for single discipline consulting assistance or comprehensive research-based multi-sensory design and testing, the firm has an extensive track record in these fields, along with a nearly five decade depth of experience in leading our fields in this type of work. We founded the Sound Quality Working Group in 1991, sponsored by Bruel & Kjaer, Sennheiser, Cortex, Yamaha, TEAC, SMS, Ansys, and LabView. We taught 10 years of seminars to the Fortune 1000, and we have completed many millions of dollars in Sound Quality studies, which changed the history of many of these product categories.