Abstract
The paper offers insights into people’s exploration of creative products shown on a computer screen within the overall task of capturing artifacts’ original features and functions. In particular, the study presented here analyzes the effects of different forms of representations, i.e., static pictures and videos. While the relevance of changing stimuli’s forms of representation is acknowledged in both engineering design and human-computer interaction, scarce attention has been paid to this issue hitherto when creative products are in play. Six creative products have been presented to twenty-eight subjects through either pictures or videos in an Eye-Tracking-supported experiment. The results show that major attention is paid by people to original product features and functional elements when products are displayed by means of videos. This aspect is of paramount importance, as original shapes, parts, or characteristics of creative products might be inconsistent with people’s habits and cast doubts about their rationale and utility. In this sense, videos seemingly emphasize said original elements and likely lead to their explanation/resolution. Overall, the outcomes of the study strengthen the need to match appropriate forms of representation with different design stages in light of the needs for designs’ evaluation and testing user experience.
Highlights
In the design field, a traditional strategy to reduce the risk of failures stands in making designed products be evaluated, especially if they have innovative features and functions or if they create and fulfill new users’ needs
The importance of evaluating a product already from the early design phases is stressed by many scholars, e.g., [1,2,3,4]
Users have been routinely involved in the design process to carry out evaluations, but this has not covered the early design stages regularly—prototypes close to their final design have been mainly dealt with in the past
Summary
A traditional strategy to reduce the risk of failures stands in making designed products be evaluated, especially if they have innovative features and functions or if they create and fulfill new users’ needs. The importance of evaluating a product already from the early design phases is stressed by many scholars, e.g., [1,2,3,4]. Arrighi et al [5] hypothesize an improvement of products with consequent saving of resources if final users are involved from the beginning of the design process. Users have been routinely involved in the design process to carry out evaluations, but this has not covered the early design stages regularly—prototypes close to their final design have been mainly dealt with in the past. The use of physical prototypes to test the effectiveness of a product has advantages in terms of evaluations’ reliability, but presents many disadvantages that cannot be overlooked, especially in terms of resources and time. Mengoni et al [6] report that the effort in virtual prototyping should be less than 40% compared to physical prototyping in consideration of all digital steps of the settings
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