Title: Challenges in expert user participation in design evaluation meetings

Authors: Romain Farel; Onur Hisarciklilar; Jean-François Boujut; Guillaume Thomann; François Villeneuve

Addresses: Laboratoire Genie Industriel, Ecole Centrale Paris, Grande Voie des Vignes, Chatenay-Malabry, 92320, France ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, 817 Sherbrooke St. W, Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada ' Laboratoire G-SCOP 46, avenue Félix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble, France ' Grenoble-INP, UJF-Grenoble 1, CNRS, G-SCOP UMR5272 Grenoble, F-38031, France ' Grenoble-INP, UJF-Grenoble 1, CNRS, G-SCOP UMR5272 Grenoble, F-38031, France

Abstract: This paper explores the design collaboration between designers and expert users in the specific case of new surgical instrument design. To this end, two design evaluation meetings were studied. Decision and interaction analysis methods were applied to compare the effectiveness of the design team on discussing and solving design issues with and without active participation of the expert user. The observations showed that, in the absence of the user, the designers were unable to make decisions about technical solutions relating to usability issues, and the expert user's comments during the subsequent meeting significantly altered their decisions. These two observations indicate that the use of a support tool could have a significant role to help asynchronous communication in such a design process.

Keywords: collaborative design; annotation; surgical instruments; observation; expert users; user integration; interaction analysis; expert user participation; design evaluation meetings; design collaboration; instrument design; asynchronous communication; design process.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2013.055155

Journal of Design Research, 2013 Vol.11 No.2, pp.186 - 201

Received: 11 Jun 2012
Accepted: 15 Mar 2013
Published online: 28 Jun 2014 *

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