User-centred design for industrial designers

Product aesthetics is important. Looking good is what attracts customers and makes a product stand out on the shelf, particularly for consumer lifestyle products. Customers want products that make a statement about their personalities and their lifestyles.

While it's important to look good, there needs to be a fine balance between aesthetics and usability requirements if we are to avoid the common pitfalls that many nice-looking products today face. Too many products have buttons of the same shape and size that are indistinguishable and offer no clue to their functions until their fine labels are read. That is, if they can even be read. Many labels on products are small, printed on shiny metallic backgrounds or simply molded or embossed, making them almost unreadable from certain angles. The use of icons-only labels may look good graphically but can be ambiguous and cryptic. Flushed doors and memory card slots may look good but make them difficult to open or to remove inserted cards. The list goes on.

Users buy products and interact with them to perform tasks to get the job done. A product that harmoniously blends good looks and good usability is a key competitive differentiator.

We can be your partner, working together with you to ensure that usability considerations are properly addressed in a way that complements the aesthetics. We can present alternative design suggestions that take into account both aesthetic and usability requirements. We can help develop user, functional and contextual requirements early in the design phase that will help you generate appropriate product concepts. These include product ergonomics (fit and feel), functional grouping and presentation of controls and information displays. We can review, test and critique product concepts, graphics icons and labels from a usability perspective, identify potential problems and recommend suggestions for improvements.

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