Friday, January 25, 2008

Assignment: Pleasure with Products

Visceral design: Gabor Kanabe 8-dance


Visceral:
I have chosen this watch as visceral design due to its aesthetics. The watch’s hands are made up of a large and small sub dial that move around its face, showing different images every minute within 12 hours. In my personal opinion, I think it would be fun looking at the transition of the sub dials every now and then. Likewise, the face is also made from wood with carvings that further gave it a classic look. I feel that its appearance is able to give its user alot of pleasure due to the unique hands and modern-classic look.

Behavioural:
On other hand, I find it extremely difficult to read the time with this watch. It is understandable that we are supposed to read the time by looking at where the yellow hands were pointing towards. However the position of the numbers are slightly different from our usually hand watches. From the picture below, it is shown that ‘I’ was placed in the position of ‘XII’, and so on. As it defys our expectation and due to habit, it is likely for a user to read the time wrongly. This would greatly decrease the pleasure of using the watch because of its lack of usuability.



http://www.gaborkanabe.ch/kanabe.html

Reflective:
It is prestigious due to its brand as well as its white gold casing. Adding to that, there is a limited edition of only 23 pieces in the world. It has implied that it is a collectors' item. Thus it also portrays a symbol of high status which can be used to show off. However, due to its lack of usability, the watch would merely be more of a display than for practical use.


Behavioural Design: Casio Baby G watch #BG169-7V


Behavioural:
It performs great with many useful functions such as alarm, stopwatch, light and calendar. With labels on the watch’s face, I think it has helped the make the product more user friendly. In addition, from reviews online I have also found users commending on the watch’s durability which I felt would also further increase the pleasure of using the watch.

Reflective:
The watch is capable of portraying a young and sporty image on its users. In my opinion, it also has a show-off value to an extent due to the brand and functions of the product.

Visceral:
The watch has a cute, sporty and adventurous outlook which I felt was quite attractive.


Reflective Design: Tag Heuer’s Formula 1 Glamour Diamonds



Reflective:
In my opinion, the watch gives its user an elegant, feminine and matured image. Moreover it reflects high social status due to its prestigious brand as well as its appearance which comprises a bezel made of diamonds.

Visceral:
The watch is attractive due to it its bezel that's made of 120 diamonds. It has also displayed a sense of classiness.

Behavioural:
The time on the watch can be easily read. In addition, it also has a date display function. In my personal opinion, I think a date display is functional as I personally couldn’t keep track of dates. Furthermore, the watch is also made of scratch-resistant sapphire crystal which will eliminate fear of scratches on the watch.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Asignment 0- Bad Design

Bad Design- Refrigerator (Hitachi)
Problem- No alarm in the vegetable compartment (center)






User experience and feelings toward the product

The purchaser of the refrigerator was my mother. She bought the product due to its multiple compartments, and most importantly the integrated alarm system which sounds off when a compartment is not properly closed. She perceived the alarm system would allow her to save some money on electrical bill as our family members were caught not shutting the compartments of our old refrigerator once in a while. According to her, the salesperson somewhat highlighted the alarm as one of refrigerator’s unique selling proposition. However, she soon realized the alarm in the vegetable compartment did not work and thought it was faulty. We only came to know that only the top and bottom compartments are equipped with alarm after flipping through the manual. She ended up being somewhat disappointed with the product due to the missing feature.

Lesson learnt from the interaction

She adapted to the inconsistent feature by not depending on the alarm entirely and reminded all our family members to do a double check on the refrigerator compartments after use.

Impression of brand

Despite the disappointment, my mother still finds the brand trustworthy due to its reputation of durability as well as its long existence in producing electrical appliances.

My reflection on the product and user reaction

The product is inconsistent in its design feature. Users will probably expect all the compartments to be equipped with alarm instead of only the top and bottom compartments. Such expectation can come from various aspects including brand familiarity, past experiences, word-of-mouth as well as sales pitch. Despite there was not too much of inconvenience caused in the usage of the product, user dissatisfactory exists when expectations are not met. Hence feature consistency is important in a product design as it determines the pleasure of using the product.

In the case mentioned above, the user’s pleasure of using the product declined as her perceived important feature was inconsistent and she had to adapt by being more cautious. However, we should also not ignore the ability of the brand reputation in the establishment of brand impression. Hitachi’s long existence in producing electrical appliances in this case has accumulated brand loyalty, thus causing less effect to the impression of its brand by an unsatisfied user.