ABSTRACT
Consumer products comprise a wide range of products, which includes mechanical products (e.g. knife) as well as power-driven products (e.g. washing machine, car). They may differ in their complexity for user-product interaction, with pairs of scissors (low complexity), vacuum cleaners (medium complexity), and central heating system (high complexity) representing typical examples of different complexity levels. Complexity in user-product interaction may not necessarily be congruent with technical complexity. For example, the television as a highly complex appliance in a technical sense is generally quite easy to operate for users. More complex products are of greater interest to human factors specialists because of higher cognitive demands, higher risk of errors, and greater potential for user dissatisfaction. This chapter primarily focuses on those consumer products that pose at least a moderate amount of cognitive demands on their users. Examples of these consumer products are coffee machine, video recorder, lawn mower, dishwasher, and central heating system. Cars and personal computers would also belong to that group but they are covered in separate chapters of this volume. Of the many research questions and practical issues that surround the design of consumer products, this chapter concentrates on four major aspects. It presents goals and criteria of consumer product design, examines the product design process, provides examples of empirical studies in the field and, finally, outlines trends in the research field.
