Research

Theory and Practice. Product development traditionally uses marketing focus groups to determine user satisfaction with conceptual design directions, yet these opinion-based methods have no scientific validity, as they are simply used for opinion gathering. And as the psychology and market research fields have known for decades, users cannot accurately self-report on their design preferences or motivations. So focus groups cannot be used to predict consumer behavior.

With this in mind, we are quite focused on helping the design team to achieve design resonance, and the sense of emotional satisfaction provided by a product that is designed with user measurement to determine the attachment the user will have to the new product.

We provide POP Visual Jury measurement of a set of examples of any product type, and further Visual Juries are used as the design team continues into early conceptual design.

The aesthetics which will satisfy the user more can be measured, and there is often a measurable difference between the industrial designer and his or her user group. Design is not for designers; it is for users.

Specialties. We can measure design success by measuring user response, and this can be done on a large scale, such as large vehicle products, or on a smaller scale, such as appliances, computer products or medical products.  It can even be done on design colors and finishes, as these seemingly small decisions can have a major impact, as our research has shown, in discovering the radical changes in overall response to colors and finishes alone.

Philosophy. We believe success is defined by users, and if the user is not included in the process, there will be no predictability in terms of a successful response to the intermediate or the final design.

Summary. Measuring users is the only primary measurement that can be done in product development. Measuring products (acoustics, lighting, daylighting, thermal comfort, indoor air quality) are only meaningful when we know what values users desire.

This HATS recording process is part of a 12-year program, called "Americas Quietest Refrigerators", that we supported for the Sears Kenmore Brand.  The products were  designed and manufactured by appliance companies to Sear's specifications. These suppliers were not allowed to make products for their own company that were as quiet as the products sold to Sears for sale under the Kenmore brand.