6.4. Relevance to industry

The EEE (Experimental ergonomic evaluation) procedures developed in this study support all the aims of ergonomics in product development presented in Fig. 18. They highlight the importance of usability, liability and safety, which promote product technology and marketing, leading to the well-being of both users and the producer. User trials accomplished with the methods used in this study help to introduce segmentation into product design. The product can be oriented towards special customer groups, such as the disabled and the elderly emphasised for example in EU. The procedures can also be targeted to narrower segments, including even “individual design for one”.

Product creation in R&D has become an increasingly systematic and effective, global activity, which is highly essential in markets. User-centred approaches are needed more and more urgently. Their cycle can be suggested to be a direct application of that applied to quality management (Fig. 19).

In this study, an effort was made to find out new ways to implement user-centred approaches, which have been recently emphasised in both standards and textbooks. The usability trials designed to facilitate evaluation in this study can be developed into easy-to-use, reliable usability tests that can be routinely applied by, for example, companies. Routines are proved to be consistent and valid enough.

An increasing number of studies demonstrate that the practice of taking user needs into account during development by usability engineering methods may be cost-efficient (Hyppönen 1999). At Philips, they found that ISO 9241 (1998), Part 11, can be very useful as a selling instrument (de Vries et al. 1994). User-centred design shortens the overall development time by reducing the number of expensive changes required late in the design process and results in improved quality on a market that is getting increasingly more discriminating with respect to both usefulness and usability (den Buurman 1998). Checking users’ opinions at various stages of the design is essential and can save a lot of time by ensuring that unusable, unnecessary or unattractive features are avoided (Preece et al. 1994).

Further, a high degree of usability improves the company’s image because consumers find the products more effective, efficient and comfortable to use. The likelihood of future sales will be increased, as consumers are more likely also to buy other products of the company. Usability may be one of the few areas left where manufacturers can gain commercial advantages over their competitors. Manufacturing processes have now reached a level where further progress in terms of quality or cost savings are likely to be only marginal. Offering customers user-centred products can be seen as something new in markets where the technical and functional aspects of products may show little differentiation between competitors.

With the procedures used in this study, it is easy to accomplish benchmarking. The procedures allow comparison of the manufacturer’s own product to competitive products. They provide an ”origo” setting in which the manufacturer’s own and the competitors’ products can be compared. The more general "origo" for usability engineering could hopefully be approached, too. The procedures of this study can also be used to combine the bottom-up approach, which takes the customers’ needs into consideration, and the top-down approach, which involves a technology push.

Ergonomic practitioners should become aware of the marketing needs and adopt new methods that cater to these needs (Meyer & Seagull 1996). The general aim is that the designer would benefit from the methods and the participants could be easily incorporated into the design process, to promote the creation of the final product. The methods used are valid both for high-tech companies and for more traditional manufacturers. The development of such methods is beneficial. The people involved represent both company designers and organisational users, such as hospitals, home care organisation and individual users. The users are future buyers of the product, and it is therefore good to know beforehand their needs, behaviours, preferences and attitudes.