Citation

Alcantara E, Artacho MA, Gonzalez JC, Garcia AC. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 2005; 35(8): 727-735.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Innovating products with a stable and well-positioned image in the market faces the risk of sales decrease and image's loss as far as customers' perception of the product may be altered. This paper presents the application of differential semantics to assess user's perception of products and the influence of design changes on it. The technique is demonstrated in innovating a traditional hospital clog. The perception of this product in the semantic space of casual footwear was determined and a new clog was designed aiming at changing some aspects of perception while keeping the rest.A graphical tool called semantic profile was developed to interpret and analyse the results of product semantics on either a single product (individual semantic profile) or for comparing two products (compared semantic profile). Statistical parameters are included to help in decision making. The intraclass correlation coefficient was introduced to measure the consensus of subjects about product perception and ANOVA was used to compare the perception of two products. The results showed that differential semantics and the semantic profiles allow controlling product perception and innovation. Small changes in the design of a shoe resulted in a significant modification of its perception, not always as expected, which suggested the need of analysing the influence of design changes in perception.Relevance to industryThe individual semantic profile allows understanding the perception of a product so to tune it with its communication. On the other hand, the compared semantic profile makes possible to control Innovation and design changes from consumer's expectations and preferences point of view by comparing the perception of two products. This is of great help and offers new possibilities for the development of consumer centred products from an emotional point of view.