Design for safety: Involving users’ perspectives: Redesign proposals for gas lamps using a pierceable cartridge

Abstract

This paper reports a small-scale study looking at how designers respond to information about users’ perspectives and use patterns, when redesigning a consumer product. The designers were asked to generate design proposals for a safe and usable gas lamp (used mainly when camping) after they had consulted the findings from an observational study on the usage of the gas lamps and the replacement of the pierceable cartridge. The findings from this field study were provided to the designers under three experimental conditions, which varied the presentation format and the type and availability of in-depth information (tabular data vs. narratives vs. audio/video descriptions). The study describes the usage of the information by the designers in the design process. We wanted to see how the designers reacted to the information and whether there was any difference in their response depending on the richness of the information offered. This is an aspect of design which has, surprisingly, attracted very little research attention up to now and even such a small study as this can help to structure the interesting questions and begin to give direction towards answers. We emphasise here the richness of the contextual and process information derived from the study, rather than any quantitative conclusions. It appeared that the basic descriptions were sufficient for designers to learn what safety and usability problems they should deal with. The in-depth descriptions on risk perception and perception of product characteristics were frequently referred to by designers who had access to this information. However, the availability of in-depth information did not seem to lead to differences in the type of design solutions generated by the designers. We also came across some interesting and, in some instances, worrying attitudes to the task and objectives of the designer in relation to safety.