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Investigating design issues in household environments

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Abstract

This paper argues that the current involvement of end users in the design of technological artefacts is too superficial. It is common to involve people in requirements generation, but rarely in product inception or design. A study is reported involving five households in central Scotland, who were each visited on three occasions, using a new investigative framework. Illustrative examples are provided of the strengths and weaknesses of the methods used. Despite the latter, it is demonstrated that the general public can both generate and critique design ideas and that valuable contributions to understanding people's relationships with technologies can be expected both from children and from the elderly.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Dr Alison Crerar for her helpful comments on previous versions of this.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Napier University, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK

    L. Baillie & D. Benyon

  2. School of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4HN, UK

    C. Macaulay

  3. Department of Computing, Aarhus University, DK-8000, Aarhus, Denmark

    M. G. Petersen

Authors
  1. L. Baillie
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  2. D. Benyon
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  3. C. Macaulay
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  4. M. G. Petersen
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Correspondence to L. Baillie.

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Baillie, L., Benyon, D., Macaulay, C. et al. Investigating design issues in household environments. Cogn Tech Work 5, 33–43 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-002-0116-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-002-0116-5

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