Developing a lifestyle design approach in brand design process through UCD methodology

Abstract

This paper presents a lifestyle design approach in the design process of the QM (a local furniture manufacture in China) brand design project. The approach was developed to help designers efficiently understand segmented customers’ profile based on market research. Designers can be inspired by lifestyle prototypes generated through the lifestyle design approach. This approach is developed based on three UCD methodology principles: user focus, using prototype and iteration with evaluation. The lifestyle design approach has three steps: concretizing customer profile, creating lifestyle prototype and evaluating lifestyle prototype. We implement the approach in the QM brand design project to deliver several lifestyle prototypes and evaluate them. This paper concludes that the lifestyle design approach can connect costumer research and creative design. It will be of interest to designers and market researchers.