Soft problems

Chajoong Kim: “People complain about soft usability problems like touch, shape and colour.” (Photo: Tomas van Dijk)

Name: Chajoong Kim (37)
Nationality: South Korean
Supervisor: Dr Henri Christiaans (Faculty of Industrial Design)
Subject: Usability problems: The influence of user diversity
Thesis defence: Next year

“Despite the enormous progress over the last decades in technology and design, consumers are complaining more and more about electronic products. Not about technical problems, but rather they complain about what I call ‘soft usability’ problems. People don’t like the touch, shape, colour, slow reaction or complexity of their phone, for instance, or the fact that it heats up while they’re using it. Consequently, they return seemingly flawless products to the store. And sometimes they’re so disappointed that they pledge to never ever buy a product from that particular manufacturer again. These are called ‘no failure found products’. It seems people have become spoiled.

But there is more to it than that. The user diversity has increased. A long time ago the mobile phone was only used by the army. Now everybody uses it, from tribal people in Africa, monks and business men, to young children and the elderly. Yet still, many companies design their products as if a single type of consumer will use it. They focus on simple aspects of human nature while designing their products. Everybody for instance likes easy to use appliances. But there are many aspects that are culture-related that should also be taken into account. I investigated the cultural differences between Dutch, South Koreans and Americans in how they experience soft usability problems.

I performed experiments with 23 Americans, 33 South Koreans and 22 Dutch people. The participants had to individually operate two electronic consumer products: a radio alarm clock, as a representative of simple and less emotionally intimate electronic products, and an mp3 player, as representative of more complex and emotionally intimate electronic products.

The South Koreans, Dutch and Americans complained about very different things. The South Koreans didn’t like the shape of the alarm clock - it was round and therefore looked like a toy to them. The Dutch and Americans were annoyed by the buttons and found the clock too complicated to operate. I believe South Koreans are much more respectful towards technological devices; they say to themselves, ‘Ok, this is a complex product and so I need to have some patience’. Americans and Dutch people view products as if they were individuals that do not want to cooperate. Dutch people can on occasion say that a computer is stupid. Someone from South Korea would never say that. The South Koreans complain more about sensations, such as touch, while the Americans hardly complained about those things - they were the least sensitive. But this is not just an amusing story; hopefully my study can help designers make products more satisfactory to consumers.”