USER EXPERIENCE ENHANCED PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

Industry Spanning Modular User Experience Paradigms

Joachim Schonowski

T-Systems Enterprise Services GMBH

Rietze Straße 19, 10409 Berlin, Germany

Keywords: User experience, user experience enhanced product lifecycle management, society change.

Abstract: The introduction speed and complexity in the digital information / multimedia age poses challenges for the

“normal” end user. New digital technologies, services, products are often provided to the end consumer

having a bad user experience (e.g. WAP, PTT). Companies need to encompass user experience into the

product lifecycle. Instead of multiple different user experiences for many “digital” based consumer products

only a few should exist, using key user experience paradigms. Application of the key user paradigms shall

enable users to use products more intuitive (even if different industries are involved) and guide them to use

most of the supported use cases provided, when needed. Society is under constant evolution and change

(e.g. demographic factor) The user experience enhanced product life cycle should be harmonised with the

standard product development: promotion, pricing, product, placement but also take the society change (e.g.

silver generation) and new life concepts into account.

1 INTRODUCTION

The vast variety of products, goods, services …

overcharge people, even with “easy” tasks to buy a

washing powder or body cream.

Technology development in traditional manufacturer

industries accelerated the production of goods and

therefore reduced costs. Due to this, markets

changed from sales, to buyer to product market

(Herrmann and Moeller, 2006). New technologies,

services, products (physical or digital) are

developed, which are often thrown into the market

without consumer orientation and explanation.

Instead these “developments” are strongly or purely

technology driven providing the user with a bad or

confusing user experience.

Focusing on digital products / services, “good”

examples for a bad user experience, were introduced

with the hype technology of the last decade: mobile

telephony. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol),

which was used as synonym for the mobile Internet

and another more recent example push to talk (peer

to many communication) a success in the USA but

not in EU, showed what happens if the user is not

integrated in the product development cycle. While

in the first case people’s expectation was not hit at

all, for the latter there was a lack of understanding

for the need and the use case (innovations-report).

Part of the confusion might also result from English

based advertisements in non English speaking

countries, native people do not understand some

slogans (e.g. Germany (sirvaluse).

A good example are some music enabled mobile

phones (e.g. Sony Ericsson “Walkman” or Nokia N-

Series music (sonyericsson), (Nokia)), where on

these devices the product mobile communication

and mobile music listening co-exist.

The introduction of new technologies has always

changed the way of life dramatically.

Developments, innovations … often lead to a society

change. G. Schulze describes today’s society as

“The experience society” and investigates, how

society changes if the constant battle to survive is no

more existing, like the era after WWII (the post war

era) and people become more subject centered

(Schulze, 2005).

Another interesting trend in this context is thin

out of the middle (Herrmann and Moeller, 2006).

“People tend to buy more often rather extremely

cheap or expensive.” This behaviour makes it more

difficult for product and brand placement.

The so called silver generation is feeling younger

and is interested to use modern technology as well

and in addition possesses the money to pay for

it!(Deutsche Bank). But it is inevitable to address

also the personal circumstances, like reduced fitness,

reduced visual acuity … and to incorporate the elder

segment into the product lifecycle.

337

Schonowski J. (2007).

USER EXPERIENCE ENHANCED PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE - Industry Spanning Modular User Experience Paradigms.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 337-339

DOI: 10.5220/0002411903370339

 SciTePress

Therefore existing segmentation models become

out of date.

Solution attempt:

Understand modern regional life concepts

Develop user experience paradigms / modules

The example show, that in order to create usable but

also needed / required products or services it is

necessary to integrate user experience early in the

product lifecycle in companies, provide similar

product user experiences even in different industries

and change from standardised segmentation models

to more flexible world of life concepts.

2 CHALLENGES

Today the end user is bombarded with

advertisements, product information and new

technologies from everywhere.

Commercials / advertisements are provided to the

end user via four technical communication channels

(TV, Radio, Internet and mobile telephony) and

three other channels: print media, shops (if

available) and people themselves (see figure 1).

Digital

Multi promotion

Customer

Radio /DAB

Internet

Mobile

Network

Consumer:

Consistent promotion approach

generates

high reach / attention.

Multi access

Customer

Radio /DAB

Internet

Mobile

Network

Consumer:

High quality content access

options

from all available technologies

(using single authentication or

single sign on)

Figure 1: Seamless user experience. Digital promotion

towards the customer and multi access.

The coming all IP network structure (IP Multimedia

Subsystem) (Forrester, 2005), which separates the

network from the service layer, leads to the

possibility of seamless access to multimedia

contents, multiple usage and multiple distribution.

Via advertisements and the existing promotion

customer expectation of seamless multi access multi

usage and super distribution already exists (see

figure 2) but is hampered by different formats (e.g.

digital music: mp3, aac, aac+, video: H.264, 3GPP)

or digital rights management (OMA).

Products need to be created in an user adjusted

manner. Doing customer based research, consumer

expectation, demand, requirements and abilities shall

be understood and documented in more detail in a

Superdistribution

Multi usage

Customer

Fixed network /

broadband

Cable

network

Mobile

Network

Customer

Consumer:

Share personality via content.

Enrich your message.

(New demand for internet /

mobile network).

Consumer:

Buy once use where possible (e.g. music

videos or ringtones on mobile and fixed

line).

Figure 2: Seamless user experience. Illustration of super

distribution and multi usage of customer owned content.

highly complex digital world, by doing and

comparing primary and secondary market research.

A detailed investigation in how product

introduction (focusing on digital content

provisioning) into the market could be made more

successful than in the past using upcoming topics in

the telecommunication and multimedia industry (e.g.

IP Multimedia Subsystem, Interactive TV, IPTV

(Forrester, 2005), UMTS, PTT) and combining them

with the traditional approach: product, pricing,

placement & promotion (Ramme, 2000) (see figure

3).

1. Attention

(Easy / clear talk)

2. Interest / Attraction

(Design / Needs)

3. Information

(Product Features)

(Pricing)

4. Buy (on / offline)

(Availability

Pricing)

5. Out o.t. box exp.

(First impression)

6. Configuration

(Set up / Administration)

7. Scenario / Product exp

(First usage)

8. Usage

(Daily usage)

9. Update or add.

Apps & services

(Future usage)

Focus:

Customer

Figure 3: User experience cycle: Assignment of the four

marketing principles Placement, Promotion, Pricing and

Product to the product lifecycle.

In terms of User Experience many definitions exist,

getting themselves complex.

It is the aim of this thesis to use only three

guiding principles simplicity, similarity and

consistency and three supporting elements design,

expectation (see figure 4) and understanding to

derive paradigms for a lasting user experience on a

broad range of products and investigate if and how

these could be used in combination with a user

encompassed product introduction cycle.

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338

Therefore it is necessary to further detail the user

experience product introduction and lifecycle

management adding learning from other industries

and carrying this out for products where similar

usage flows, GUI, sound patterns… are already or

will be used (e.g. mobile and fixed line GUI, mobile

– on board traffic navigation system).

Simplicity

Similarity

Consistency

Design

Expectation

Understanding

Guiding principles

Supporting elements

Figure 4: Focused user experience: Three guiding

principles & three supporting elements.

The introduction of new technologies has always

changed the way of life dramatically. Traditional

ways of communication (e.g. letter, postcard, fixed

line communication) vanish and new arrive (e.g.

email, picture postcard via MMS, SMS, mobile

communication).

The changing user behaviour (e.g. parallel

communication (Laurer, 2006) and upcoming of new

trends (youtube, my space) in conjunction with the

shrinking population in the western orientated world

demographic factor needs to be addresses from all

industries.

The thesis shall identify way of life concepts,

community behaviour, compare these with existing

segmentation models and use them at future

products.

3 CONCLUSION

The importance of user experience is doubtless and

most industries use some kind of procedures like

user centered design, user centered information

design, usability engineering (IBM).

A new kind of user experience needs to be

generated which incorporates the life concepts of

people, there society and their regional and cultural

differences Tractinsky (1997) found that culture

affects the user’s perception of aesthetics and

apparent usability (Culture and usability evaluation,

2006).

Usability has an enormous potential in the

modern communication age in terms of attracting

new user groups and in terms of economics reducing

the training costs (netigator).

A recent example is the new Apple phone which

will presumably have a mode dependent user

interface and will be part of the investigation

(Apple).

This new user experience needs to create usage

paradigms similar to modularity used in many

industries (computing, automotive…) but also needs

to incorporate the upcoming cross functional

possibilities of the multimedia age like a net based,

presence and location based phone / address book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Roman Englert, working at

Deutsche Telekom, T-Laboratories for important

remarks, changes and discussions.

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