Distributed Asynchronous Participatory Design - A Case Study on the Concept Design of Professional Mobile Document Working Device

• Main Authors: Lin, Liang-Jen, 林亮仁
• Other Authors: Chen, Lin-Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/36644867123257512945

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 設計研究所 === 90 === The purpose of any product development is to work out a commodity that meets not only the users’ needs but also the market’s requirements. The design decision and new product development, therefore, should be expected to match the user’s needs as much as possible. In the light of this, how to discover the user’s needs and how to extract the user’s views towards the new product design become one of the most important issues in new product development process. Research has demonstrated that many successful product development cases are based upon the concept of customer-oriented and user-centered design. In addition to the in-depth market survey and preliminary research, one of the most effective ways to fulfill the above concept is to apply the Participatory Design Method to the new product development. In such an approach, designers can further understand the user’s needs and directly obtain information through the user’s participation. With the rapid development of the Internet, many researchers have investigated the cooperative design models through the use of web sites. A Distributed Asynchronous participatory design method in which users take part in the designing activities and discussions, however, is rarely been reported. In this thesis, the author attempted to apply the distributed asynchronous participatory method to new product design process. A web site for product design was used as a communication channel so that users could take part in the discussion of design ideas, anticipated difficulties, and other related issues. Besides reviewing the related research regarding user’s participation in new product design procedure and cooperative design method on the Internet, this study mainly aimed at applying user’s participatory model to the practical design development cases. Based upon related research and theories, a realistic distributed asynchronous participatory design platform was constructed. Target users were invited to join the product design process, and situations in such a design model were investigated to determine the rationality and feasibility of the operation mechanism. In terms of the practical design project, the author worked together with Philips Research East Asia-Taipei （PREAT） for the conceptual design for a professional mobile documentation system. Through the use of Internet, users could offer their opinions of alternative ideas during product development process. More importantly, the design team could define product functions and evaluate ideas by means of the distributed asynchronous participatory design method. Protocol analysis was then used to analyze the procedure and result of the operation mechanism of the distributed asynchronous participatory design method. Characteristics and effects of the proposed design method were discussed. The results obtained in this study could serve as references for future participatory design cases and other related research.