The User Experience Redesign of a Product Instruction Manual Using the Poka Yoke Principle

Abstract

Instructional manuals serve the role of educating new users on how to assemble or operate a new product, aiming to bridge the gap between the intended use idealized by the designer and the actual use that a consumer would intuitively perform. Historically however, instruction manuals have been known to be confusing and not usful. The design of a toy spider instruction manual was analyzed using sequential explanatory method to determine the effectiveness of the instruction manual using a descriptive survey (User Experience Questionnaire) and grounded theory was used to develop themes that would describe issues in the instruction manual. The study utilized the design aspects of user experience, usability and desirability to determine the successes and short comings of the manual. To address design issues, the industrial manufacturing principle, poka yoke was used. Poka yoke, or mistake proofing, is a strategy used by engineers to inspect products during the assembly process to check for errors instead of conducting quality control at the end of assembly. The results presented 12 themes that were used to revise the instruction manual. For this experiment, it was found that the implementation of the poka yoke principle increased the scales of attractiveness and desirability, and decreased the usability of the instruction manual as defined by the descriptive survey.