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

公司不断尝试了解消费者对产品的看法，以便设计更好的未来产品，以应对新兴的技术，环境和社会挑战。公司传统上采用的技术包括焦点小组、调查和在产品使用过程中观察客户。然而，在使用这些方法时存在各种挑战。例如，焦点小组通常会产生可能受到其他参与者影响的情绪评估。调查（和焦点小组）通常是在客户远离实际产品使用的情况下进行的，这限制了它们的相关性。观察依赖于观察者的解释。在所有这些方法中，信息都是定性的，可以进行主观解释。该奖项支持基础研究，为定量了解消费者感知以及这些感知如何与产品功能联系的技术奠定基础。这将为设计师在开发下一代产品和服务时提供客观的解释。本研究中的网络共情设计框架将侧重于将传感器和信息技术与现有产品相结合，使产品能够“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传感技术中的减小的尺寸和成本来提供否则无法获得的产品使用数据。研究计划的具体目标包括：（i）验证基于结构方程模型（SEM）的广义分析框架，该框架可用于耦合定性（例如，调查）和定量（例如，传感器）的性质，（ii）因果建模的框架，映射消费者的看法，以特定的产品功能的应用，及（iii）通过应用网络共情数据的直接验证性设计推理的示范。这些目标将通过在实验室和现场环境中的人类受试者实验来促进。在一个越来越依赖知识的经济体中，网络移情框架将为设计师提供一种新颖、定量和更有效的方式，在产品和系统交付给最终用户后，让他们了解产品和系统。这种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，从而使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.