In the last decades, the rapid change and prevalent use of technology are concerning, as they induced effects which mainly altered various encompassing contexts like consumer market dynamics and product development processes. Evidently, these transformations also affect the way users interact with products.
It is observed that, technological novelties are applied in the competitive market as a tool for product differentiation. In addition, the rapid development of these technologies is a dominating factor on shortening product lifecycles. Resulting from these two factors, implementing latest technologies in new products is interpreted by producers as an absolute way of achieving market success. Consequently, most of the products in everyday life are designed with a primary aim to implement latest technological advances, without appropriate consideration of user requirements and characteristics. The phenomenon has negative consequences on product usability.
This study basically examines the usability problems that are related with digital technology impelementations in consumer products. The evaluations are based on the contexts such as: changes in contemporary market conditions with the effects of the recent technological developments, technology-driven approaches in product development processes and the transformative consequences of digital technology applications on user-product interaction. Literature surveys are employed as method.
Finally, interaction characteristics of digital products and the contexts in which they are used are evaluated and it is argued that, the usability problems are due to the deficiency in evaluations of user characteristics and requirements during the product development processes, in general terms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12604954/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 May 2004 |
| Creators | Gultekin, Pelin |
| Contributors | Erbug, Cigdem |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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