Usability Innovation Process

Innovation is the soul of a successful design. Usability Innovation Process (UIP) actually is a user centered innovation process. The goal of UIP is to using usability techniques and user centered design methodology to enhance the innovation before the product definition in the whole product development process.

 

In the UIP, four major innovators will be introduced, which are user innovator, technology innovator, usability innovator and culture innovator (when research goes on, it could be adjusted).

 

User Innovator:

 

User innovator refers to innovations developed by consumers and end users, rather than manufacturers. Eric von Hippel [1] of MIT 'discovered' that most products and services are actually developed by users, who they give ideas to manufacturers. User is the key factor in UIP. Lots of new concepts, ideas of product design are from the users, especially the lead users. Lead user theory [2] [3] is applied here to support user innovator in UIP. The lead user will be main part as user innovator in UIP.

 

Technology Innovator:

 

A new technology itself means an innovation. Lots of new products or upgrading products are driven by new technologies, but converting a new technology to a new product design concept may not always be a success.

 

Before converting the new technology to product design, technology acceptance model (TAM) could be applied to detect the acceptance from users by integrating a new technology to a new product. TAM is a model derived from a theory that addresses the issue of how users come to accept and use a technology.

 

Usability Innovator:

 

Usability guidelines and techniques could be used to support the user innovator and technology innovator, but usability itself could be also seen as an independent innovator. Competitor analysis [5] will be a major method here to find out the similar products’ usability problems or design requirement from users, and then convert the analysis result as innovators for the new product design.

 

Culture Innovator:

 

Culture effects are always big issues in an international product design that should be considered. It could also be as a very important innovator in UIP. Lots of great designs show culture dependant elements. The authors’ international working environment (colleagues from different countries) will help to discover and explored the culture innovator. Geert Hofstede’ Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind [6] answers lots of culture differences on the world, but how to apply it as an innovator is a question that the authors want to reply.

 

An assumption of Usability Innovation Process

 

More detail research will deeply go on about this process. It will refer to how to identify and analyze the innovators, what techniques should be used and eventually what kind output should be delivered as design concepts for the following product development process.

 

 

Reference:

 

[1]    von Hippel, Eric, Democratizing Innovation, the MIT press, 2005

[2]    von Hippel, Eric, Lead users: a source of novel product concepts. Management Science 32, 791–805, 1986

[3]    von Hippel, Eric, the sources of innovation, Oxford University press, 1998

[4]    Ma, Qingxiong. and Liu, Liping. (2004). The Technology Acceptance Model: A Meta-Analysis of Empirical Findings. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, 16(1), pp. 59-72, Jan-Mar 2004.

[5] UsabilityNet, http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/competitoranalysis.htm, retrieved on 10th Oct 2008

[6] Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, McGraw Hill, 1991