Assessing users-designers’ gap of perception to help design for a hybrid product domain: application to sport-health product domain

Abstract

Purpose Regarding industrial sports products, there is sometimes a dual sport and health meaning intended by designers. Appearances of sport products are often quite opposite to health products. Design choices made by designers can thus be misunderstood by users. This paper aims to deeper understand the perception gap between designers and users within earlier stages of the design process to limit this confusion and help designers. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose an approach to help designers defining the perception of a new dual and hybrid product field. The first step is to collect designers’ perception through interviews combined with card sorting. The second step is to compare the perception of designers with that of users. Comparisons are based on an agreement measure. Findings The approach provides a first step to evaluate the perception of a dual hybrid product field. It allows designers to extract trends and perceptions to be considered for the design of products, to consolidate and confirm their intuitions regarding the intended dual meaning. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is to evaluate the perception of a new and non-defined hybrid product field presenting a duality in appearance. This approach can be used by designers either to identify trends to be considered, reinforce the intended meaning, or validate their intuitions while designing products with dual meanings before.