Product Development
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. As the psychology and market research fields have known for decades, users cannot accurately self-report on their design preferences or motivations. Therefore, the traditional approach in focus groups cannot be used to predict consumer behavior.
With this in mind, Orfield is quite focused on helping clients to achieve design resonance, and the sense of emotional satisfaction provided by a product that is designed with user measurement. As part of this, the lab provides POP Visual Jury measurement of a set of examples of any product type, and Visual Juries which are used as the design team continues into early conceptual design.
HATS (Head and Torso Simulator) in Anechoic Chamber
Business Jet Sound Quality Study
Norsonic Acoustic Camera Display
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.