Designers, users and a shared understanding of the product

Abstract

This paper describes the results of a detailed study which included a literature review and twenty semi-structured interviews with product designers from a large telecommunications company. The company studied has a lot of experience in product design and consistently produces high quality, usable and competitive products. In essence, the study investigated the nature and structure of users' cognitive representations of products and the ways in which designers currently go about matching their intended design of products with the users' understanding of those products. The findings from the study indicate that designers have often very little time, limited financial resources, and not enough support to take notice of users' understanding of products as much as they would like to. Moreover, no appropriate tool for predicting inclusive interaction between products and users is currently used across the organisation. However, the interviewed designers expressed high interest in using such a tool. Further research will evaluate existing tools for modelling the match between the conceptual models of designers and users and find an appropriate tool for facilitating inclusive interaction.