Expected usability and product preference
Turkka Keinonen · 1997
The design of smart products involves undesirable, yet frequen~cases when compromises between the quality of appeamnce, functionality, price and usability am required.Usability has lately been considered increasingly important for product competitiveness, but perceiving how usable a product might be prior to actual use is difficult.l%is paper considers the way people perceive and weight usability related product attributes in a decision making situation.The dimensions of usability are analyscd from consumer attitude formation point of view.A model of evaluation criteria related to expected usability is presented.It includes consumers'beliefs concerning product characteristics, benefits and an overall emotional response.Scales to measure the dimensions are developed.The scrdes are applied in a case study with 91 subjects evaluating six different heart rate monitors.The results suggest that the dimensions of usability are highly interrelated in consumers' evaluation and have only a limited potentiat to explain product preferences.