Designing Pleasurable Products: An Introduction to the New Human Factors

An understanding of human factors is increasingly playing a role in the product design. Human factors approaches have traditionally focused on usability, and this has fostered a view which tends to see products as tools and people as cognitive and physical components within a person-product system. [...]
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An understanding of human factors is increasingly playing a role in the product design. Human factors approaches have traditionally focused on usability, and this has fostered a view which tends to see products as tools and people as cognitive and physical components within a person-product system. The assumption behind usability-based approaches is that if tasks can be accomplished with a reasonable degree of efficiency and within acceptable levels of comfort then the product can be seen as fitting to the user."Designing Pleasurable Products" argues that such approaches are - in practice, if not by intention - dehumanising. We need to recognise that people are more than merely physical and cognitive processors. They have hopes, fears, dreams, values, aspirations - indeed, these are close to the very things that make us human. Pat Jordan, the founder of the Contemporary Tends Institute, not only explores usability but takes us beyond it. He explains how good designs can appeal to the user holistically, leading to products that are a joy to own and use.A practical framework - the four pleasures - is described, providing a structures approach to the creation of product design concepts. A number of design and evaluation techniques are described, including established methodologies, such as Kansei Engineering, and many new techniques. A pre-validated questionnaire for evaluating designs is also included.