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An important issue in today’s industry is design and innovation that accommodate customer’s affective
needs. This gives rise to the emerging trend of design for product ecosystems, where an ecosystem is
expected to convey more added-value than single products. However, existing studies in this field lack
a comprehensive formulation and design methodology of product ecosystem that effectively includes
the customer’s affective experience in the loop. In this regard, this research proposes a scenario-based
design approach to assist the design of product ecosystems for addressing customer’s affective needs.
A comprehensive formulation of the infrastructure of product ecosystem is presented. Next, various
scenarios are designed to facilitate the elicitation and fulfillment of customer’s affective needs. The
scenario-based design approach includes three major steps, namely, (1) scenario construction, (2)
scenario deployment, and (3) scenario evaluation. Data mining techniques are used to find the
interrelations between customer’s response and the design elements of product ecosystems. Such
interrelations provide useful guidelines for product ecosystem design. The proposed method is applied
for vehicle ecosystem design focusing on the features of the car product. It is proposed that the concept
of ecosystem is an innovative step toward affective engineering and the scenario-based approach is
appropriate to include the customers experience in the product design and evaluation cycle so as to
achieve high added-value.
products, and three types of relationships, namely, Customer 1 is directly related to two customers {Customer 2,
customer-customer, customer-product, and product-product. Customer M} and two products {Product 1, Product 2}, which
collectively constitute the ambience of Customer 1. Ambience
can also be defined for a product, i.e., the customers and
products that are directly related to a focal product are
Product
1 collectively considered as the ambience of that product.
Product
3 However, the focus of this research is on customers’
experience and affective feeling. Therefore, the ambience from
Customer the product perspective is not studied.
Customer 2 The objective of defining product ecosystems is to create the
1
real product usage context, so as to entail a scenario of the entire
Ambience Product system design for customer experience. It emphasizes the
N customer-product-ambience interactions at the systems level. A
Product lesson learned repeatedly by industrial designers is that design
Customer
2 M problems, especially for complex systems with multiple
products, have a context, and that the optimization of one part
Product ecosystem of a design may often prove to be sub-optimal or even invalid
in a broader context. Therefore, it is useful to frame the
Legend Entity: Customer Product problem of customer-product interaction in the related
Relation: Customer-Customer ambience, thus avoiding the classic pitfall of design divorced
from the context of the problem (Hewett et al., 1992; Giboin,
Customer-Product Product-Product 1999). Thus, the interactions among customers, products, and
ambience form a relatively complete and dynamic
Figure 1. Entities and relations in a product ecosystem infrastructure of the product ecosystem.
Experience 3
settings, cultural and individual differences, and so on, also
1 2 … L
mediate customer experience.
4
SCENARIO-BASED PRODUCT ECOSYSTEM DESIGN
Customer Customer
1 M’ The customer perception and experience involved in the
formation of customer affective feeling is intrinsically
Product ecosystem
process-oriented. In other words, it consists of events that may
occur in sequence or in parallel owing to many unforeseen
Figure 2. Affective dimensions in a product ecosystem
factors, such as the intention of the customer, the physical or
psychological status, and the condition of the products, etc. It
With respect to the customer experience, the relationships presents serious challenges to designers, who are tempted to
between the focal customer and the other customers can be emphasize the technology itself while neglecting the subtle
explicitly defined. The customer-customer relationship is changes of affective human factors. This is especially true for
defined as c , c | a (for i j , l 1, 2, ..., L ), such that in product ecosystem design which entails the ambience
1 i j l
considerations.
the context of activity a , l
Scenario-based design is suitable to deal with this type of
1, c has a positive effect on the affective feeling of ci , problem because of its mechanisms in evoking reflections in
j
design, reconciling concreteness and flexibility, provoking
1 0, c j
does not contribute to the affective feeling of ci , work orientation, accommodating multiple perspectives, and
1, c
j
has a negative effect on the affective feeling of ci . balancing abstraction and categorization (Carroll et al. 1998;
Carroll, 2006). In fact, scenarios suggest task-oriented
Next, the product-product relationship is defined as reflection in design, which is consistent with the requirements
2 pi , p j | al (for i j ), such that in the context of activity of product ecosystem design.
al , Despite broad applications in systems analysis and design,
the scenario-based approaches remain vague in definition and
1, p has a positive effect on the functioning of p , scope (Weidenhaupt et al., 1998). In this research, a scenario
j i
2 0, p has no effect on the functioning of p , refers to the environment in which a customer fulfills a general
j i
task in a set of interrelated activities. Accordingly,
1, p has a negative effect on the functioning of p .
j i
scenario-based design for product ecosystems is realized in
three steps, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Similarly, the customer-product relationship is defined as
3 ci , p j | al , such that in the context of activity al ,
• Scenario development
1, p j has a positive effect on the affective feeling of ci ,
Scenario • Design parameter identification
3 0, p j does not contribute to the affective feeling of ci , Construction
1,
p j has a negative effect on the affective feeling of ci .
• Environment presentation
Scenario • Experiment design
The affective feelings of a customer are formed as a Deployment
cumulative effect of customer perceptions along the customer
experience. It is concerned with multiple aspects of affective
• Evaluation criteria identification
customer needs being satisfied, including instrumental needs,
Scenario • Result processing
aesthetic, hedonic, contextual, and temporal needs (Forlizzi and Evaluation
Battarbee, 2004). It is grounded in the users’ information
processing experiences that emerge from the interaction of
products’ properties and users’ cognitive and affective Figure 3. Process of scenario-based product ecosystem design
processes, mediated by ambience within the product ecosystem.
Hence, the customer affective feeling has a temporal dimension
Scenario construction is concerned with the identification of
and can have different salient states, namely the customer
scenarios, the basic events in the scenarios, and the elements of
perception, whereas it also involves a dynamic dimension along
the ecosystem itself. Scenario deployment deals with the
the customer-ambience interaction process, namely the
presentation of scenarios to the customers or designers so as to applied on the activities or design elements to be included, as
evoke design reflections. Finally, scenario evaluation closes this may confine the problem space and the solution space, thus,
the design loop by evaluating how the design elements of the precluding design innovation.
product ecosystem address the customers’ affective needs. Next, the activities are classified into meaningful categories
This usually leads to the configuration of the ecosystem or of scenarios based on the purpose of customers using the
guidelines for designing the ecosystem. A detailed discussion product ecosystem. As an example, cars can be used for
of the processes and techniques in the scenario-based design different purposes in daily life, such as, travelling to office,
approach are presented next. going shopping, sightseeing, etc. The scenario categorization
process provides a convenient way to identifying representative
Scenario Construction situations for the customer experiences.
The next step is the specification of actual scenarios
Properly defined scenario is the prerequisite of eliciting the according to the infrastructure of ecosystems. Essentially, the
customer requirements. It is also an important step toward the products and customers that form the ambience of the focal
design of the ecosystem to fulfill the requirements. The customer are streamlined along the activity sequence for
construction of scenario must account for the interactions representing the customer experience.
between activities and design elements. The activities refer to The scenarios constructed may be defined at different levels
the series of tasks that the customer may fulfill during the usage of details depending on the availability of information. This is
of the ecosystem; while the design elements include both the in fact the elegance of scenario-based design in that abstraction
products and non-focal customer in the ecosystem, i.e., the level may vary for different design purposes (Carroll, 2006).
ambience as perceived by the focal customer. Figure 4 show the For example, a scenario may be a rough sketch of the activities
general process of constructing the scenarios. to be carried out, in addition to the products and customers, as
detached from individual activities. The actual activity
sequence, and product-customer interactions will be monitored
Scenario 1 Product Product and recorded in the experiments carried out in the scenario
1 N 1’ deployment stage. Alternatively, the activity sequences, and
Requirements product/customer interactions can be predefined with detailed
3
logic of ‘cause-effect’ and ‘cause-affect’. This establishes the
Design 1 2 … L1
Task Element
foundation of simulation-based methods in the scenario
deployment and evaluation stages.
4
Possibilities
Customer Customer Scenario Deployment
1 M1’
Scenario
Categorization … The objective of scenario deployment is to put the customers
or designers in the scenarios constructed in the previous stage,
so as to observe the user’s response and elicit the customer
Scenario Q Product Product
1 NQ’ needs. Depending on the way the scenarios are presented to the
focal customer, alternative strategies and technologies are
3 adopted. Table 1 shows the possible strategies and technologies
1 2 LQ suitable to different scenario constructs.
… The focal customer can be virtual or real, where a virtual
customer is a digital model that simulates the behavior of the
Customer Customer
customer. On the other hand, the scenario may be virtual, real,
1 MQ ’ or a mixture of both. A virtual scenario consists of digital
models of products and customers, whereas a real scenario
Figure 4. Scenario construction consists of the products and customers in real life. A scenario
can also be presented as a combination of real and virtual
The first step of scenario construction is to analyze the models. Thus, a mixed environment is presented to the
activities/tasks in the customer experience and the design customer.
elements of the ecosystem. By analyzing “what activities will
be involved in the product usage process”, the designer must be Table 1. Scenario deployment strategies
aware of the customer requirements in the activities, and in turn Scenario
Virtual Real Mixed
the design elements to address these requirements. On the other Customer
hand, given a set of design elements, there are a number of Virtual Simulation - -
possibilities for the customers to carry out the activities. Virtual Cognitive Cognitive
Activities and design elements can be loosely identified Real
Reality Task Analysis Task Analysis
based on customer surveys, brainstorming, and analysis of the
documentation of product design. At this stage, no restriction is
A virtual customer can only be put into a virtual scenario. In Evaluation criteria
this situation, scenario deployment is realized using With focus on the affective human factors, the evaluation
simulation-based approaches. This strategy relies on detailed criteria are specified as the affective descriptors that signify the
scenario specifications, such as the causal relationships among customers’ affective requirements. For products that are
activities, the properties of products, the behaviors of the virtual familiar to the customers, the affective needs are evident, and
customers. Moreover, the cognitive and affective behaviors of hence can be defined explicitly. On the other hand, for new
the focal customer have to be simulated in the model. This products, the affective aspects are not so obvious. Thus, the
presents a major challenge to this strategy considering that affective descriptors have to be elicited during or after the
simulation of human behavior using digital models is not deployment stage. In this situation, the customers are asked
reliable and robust enough for practical use. Another essential questions on their affective feelings, such as, what product
technical challenge is how to model the reasoning logic that features are impressive and lead to your pleasurable experience,
accommodates the uncertainties of both the customer and the are there any features that you find annoying, how do you
ambience. Possible solutions for this challenge include fuzzy describe your feeling when using xxx feature? Answers to these
cognitive map (Dickerson and Kosko, 1994; Miao et al., 2001), survey questions are analyzed by design experts, who will
and fuzzy Petri nets (Cao and Arthur, 1995; Chen, 2002). extract the representative affective descriptors.
A real customer can interact with virtual, real, and mixed
scenarios. Typically, a virtual scenario environment is realized Mapping affective needs into design elements
using virtual reality (VR) technologies, where a VR Assume that a set of K affective descriptors is identified and
environment consists of various digital product models and is represented as X xk . The ambience for a customer
consists of both non-focal customers ( E c , c , ..., cM )
customer models. While the advancement of technologies have Ci
– the non-focal customer in this situation – is far from practical controllable factor of the product ecosystem, it is not
application. considered as the design elements. Thus, the design elements
Pi
Alternatively, the focal customer can be put into a real of the product ecosystem is selected from E , and are
environment, where he/she completes the activities according to denoted as Y y h (for h 1, 2, ..., N ') . Also assume that a
the designation of the scenario. This presents the natural and
total of S scenarios are constructed and deployed in the
practical application of scenario-based design. The customers
can interact with products and other non-focal customers freely previous stages. For each scenario s 1, S , a group of
and respond to various stimuli spontaneously. Real time customers are tested, which are considered as the focal
monitoring system can be used to observe the customer customers in that particular scenario. The set of affective
responses, through which the feedback of customers (e.g., descriptors for the particular scenario is denoted as
voices, facial expressions, motions, respirations, etc.) is
X s xk X . The design elements for the same scenario is
* *
al., 2000), so as to elicit useful information including the finding the mapping relationship between X and Y s s
customers’ affective responses. Nevertheless, the real scenario This research adopts the association rule mining mechanism
may not be constructed at the conceptual stage of designing to establish the correlations between the affective needs and
product systems. In addition, building a real scenario for new design elements (Jiao et al., 2007). In general, such
product systems can be costly. correlations are presented as X s Ys , where an association
* *
Table 7. Association rules for scenario evaluation scenarios based on the feedback of the test-runs.
Rule Inference Relationship Support Confidence
CONCLUSIONS
1 X1 Y2 0.123 0.224
2 X2 Y11 0.151 0.213 In view of the challenges of designing products for
3 X4 Y1&Y5 0.130 0.560 customers’ affective needs, this research presents a
4 X5 Y8 0.422 0.637 scenario-based approach for designing product ecosystems.
5 X8&X9 Y11&Y12 0.135 0.232 Design for product ecosystem suggests itself to be a novel
approach as compared to traditional product design methods
6 X1&X4 Y2&Y9 0.423 0.571
owning to the consideration of the ambience. As a key idea of
7 X3&X8 Y8&Y11 0.252 1.00 product ecosystem, the ambience accommodates the entities of
8 X7&X8 Y8 0.445 0.727 an ecosystem and their interactions. It also effectively account
9 X3&X10 Y8 & Y11 &Y12 0.225 0.575 for the process-oriented customer experience in the product
10 X3&X4 &X8 Y4&Y8&Y11 0.306 0.543 design life cycle to address the affective human factors.
Moreover, a systematic approach is developed which
11 X1&X10 Y10 0.173 0.285
integrates scenario construction, scenario deployment, and
12 X3&X6&X9 Y7&Y8 0.211 0.323 scenario evaluation into a general framework. A number of
13 X5&X9&X10 Y2&Y7&Y8 0.412 0.521 technologies are incorporated in the framework depending on
… … the target of design, the availability of information, and
resource constraints. A case study of car ecosystem design
67 X3&X5 Y8 &Y9&Y10 0.308 0.412
demonstrates that the scenario-based method is applicable to
consumer product design. It is proved that the method can
Moreover, the scenario-based approach is conducive to the effectively provide design guidelines for designing ecosystems
elicitation of the affective aspects of customer needs. This is with consideration of customer affective needs.
because the affective responses are usually embedded in the
process-oriented customer experience, where the affective Acknowledgments This research is partially sponsored by the
states of customers are dynamic and difficult to capture using European Commission (DG Information Society and Media) in
traditional methods. The scenario-based design accommodates the framework of the 6th Research Program (FP6) under grant
the modeling and analysis of the customer experience in IST-5-035030-STREP (www.cater-ist.org).
relation with the product and ambience that evolves over time.
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