Cyber-Empathic Design: Using Embedded Sensors to Improve Product and System Design

公司一直在努力了解消费者对产品的看法，以便设计出更好的未来产品，以应对新出现的技术、环境和社会挑战。公司传统上使用的技术包括焦点小组、调查和在产品使用期间观察客户。然而，在使用这些方法时存在各种挑战。例如，焦点小组的情绪评估往往会受到其他参与者的影响。调查(和焦点小组)通常是在客户远离产品实际使用的情况下进行的，这限制了他们的相关性。观察依赖于观察者的解释。在所有这些方法中，信息是定性的，对主观解释是开放的。该奖项支持基础研究，为提供对消费者感知以及这些感知如何与产品特征相联系的技术提供量化了解的技术奠定基础。这将为设计师在开发下一代商品和服务时提供客观的解释。这项研究中的网络共情设计框架将侧重于传感器和信息技术与现有产品的集成，这些产品允许产品“观察自己”，并利用新的网络基础设施技术向设计师报告。这样的范例利用不断改进的网络基础设施以及不断减小的规模和传感技术的成本来提供原本无法获得的产品使用数据。研究计划的具体目标包括：(I)验证基于结构方程建模(SEM)的通用分析框架，该框架可用于耦合定性(例如调查)和定量(例如传感器)性质的多模式数据流；(Ii)因果建模框架的应用，该框架将消费者的感知映射到特定的产品特征；以及(Iii)通过应用网络共情数据来演示直接验证性设计推理。这些目标将通过实验室和现场环境中的人体受试者实验来促进。在一个日益依赖知识的经济中，网络共鸣框架将为设计师提供一种新颖、定量和更有效的方式，让他们在产品和系统掌握在最终用户手中后，了解它们。这样的理解有能力通过提高识别创新机会的能力来改变产品工程，导致产品和系统更好地满足不同最终用户的需求。

Companies are continuously trying to understand consumer perceptions of products in order to design better future products to meet emerging technical, environmental and societal challenges. The techniques traditionally employed by firms include focus groups, surveys, and observation of customers during product use. However, various challenges exist in using these approaches. For example, focus groups often yield emotional assessments that can be influenced by other participants. Surveys (and focus groups) are typically conducted while the customer is far removed from actual product usage, limiting their relevance. Observations rely on interpretations by observers. In all of these approaches, information is qualitative and open to subjective interpretation. This award supports fundamental research to build a foundation for techniques that provide a quantitative understanding of consumer perceptions and how these perceptions link with product features. This will lead to objective interpretations for designers to act on when developing the next generation of goods and services.The framework for cyber-empathic design in this research will focus on integration of sensors and information technologies with existing products that allow products to "observe themselves" and takes advantage of new cyber-infrastructure technologies to report back to designers. Such a paradigm takes advantage of the ever-improving cyber-infrastructure and decreasing size and cost in sensing technologies to provide not otherwise obtainable product usage data. The specific objectives of the research plan include: (i) validation of a generalized analytical framework based on structural equation modeling (SEM) that can be used to couple multi-modal data streams of a qualitative (e.g., surveys) and quantitative (e.g., sensors) nature, (ii) application of the framework for causal modeling which maps consumer perceptions to specific product features, and (iii) demonstration of direct confirmatory design inference through application of cyber-empathic data. These objectives will be facilitated through human subject experiments in both laboratory and field settings. In an economy increasingly reliant on knowledge, the cyber-empathic framework will provide designers a novel, quantitative and more efficient way to learn about their products and systems after they are put in the hands of end-users. Such understanding has the ability to transform product engineering by improving the ability to identify opportunities for innovation, leading to products and systems that better meet the needs of heterogeneous end-users.