Understanding consumer perception of technological product failures: an attributional approach

ABSTRACT

Besides the widely promoted advantages the influx of new technology is bringing to consumers, the disadvantages due to increasing cognitive complexity of such technological advanced products have also been recognized. Among other things, an increasing number of unknown field complaints is one of the evidences. Since consumers often perceive a product's (mal)functioning differently than designers do, we propose an attributional approach to evaluate potential product failures. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory empirical study to evaluate the attribution of picture quality failures in LCD televisions for a diverse group of consumers. This approach is aimed to provide designers better insight into how consumers perceive (potential) product failures, in order to support critical design decisions in the product development process.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Measurement

Keywords:
consumer electronics, failure attribution, product design, user-perceived failure