Using early concept narratives to collect valid customer input about breakthrough technologies: The effect of application visualization on transportation

Abstract

The value of early customer input has long been recognized by companies. However, especially when breakthrough technologies are involved, more insight in valuable methods for collecting early customer input is needed. In this paper, we propose a method to evaluate a breakthrough technology with customers. First, a creative process should point out applications of the breakthrough technology. Applications allow customers to imagine the benefits of the technology behind it. By using early concept narratives, typically scenarios of somebody using and interacting with the application, this imagination process is enhanced.When no prototypes are available yet, it appears that narratives and visuals allow customers to really "see" the new world of the application, a process called transportation, which is a mix of imagery, feelings, and attention. In an experiment in which we make use of a case of an application of a breakthrough technology, we provide empirical support for our claim that early concept narratives could be a valuable tool to get valid customer reactions. Furthermore, we show which kind of visual format the applications should have in order to optimize transportation. The results of this study will support decision making about how to pursue breakthrough application evaluations early in the product development process.

Pay by cash? Quickly design-inspired studies to gain insights about people financial transactions

“…The challenge was to think about digital cash scenarios that incorporated and improved upon the characteristics of paper cash. As a team we envisioned three scenarios of digital cash use and illustrated them by a storyboard (Van den Hende et al, 2007).…”

A framework for concept validation in product design using digital prototyping

“…communication systems have been developed so far such as [14,31,35,58,62]. A digital prototype or in some literature "digital mock-up" digitally realizes a concept to look and work like its physical realization [3].…”

“…From other side, in some cases, a different object, which possesses the same value with the product for some attributes, can be used in communication process [16,32,37]. These reports imply that fidelity means that no matter how the value is presented, it should be truly received and perceived by customers [37,58]. Our definition changes the indication of fidelity from physical similarity between the transmitter and the realization of a concept to similarity in the understanding of the values.…”

Collecting cross-cultural user data with internationalized storyboard survey

“…Storyboarding is a method for presenting ideas visually to users to helping them to understand the use cases and to identify themselves with the situations within the stories (Van den Hende et al, 2007). Storyboards are sequences of pictures resembling comic strips.…”

“…In these cases when no user interfaces yet exist, particular attention should be paid to describing the context since user experience depends also on the context of use. Storyboards help the participants to step into the situation and boost imagination (Van den Hende et al, 2007). Storyboards are attractive for crosscultural design and research, because they can be implemented into remote online surveys which enable quick and cost-efficient concept evaluation early in different use contexts in different parts of the world (Roto et al, 2009).…”