A case study on effective application of inquiry methods to find out mobile phone's new function

Abstract

Recently, as the user-centered design has appeared to production design area as an important management philosophy, there has been various trials to reflect the user's needs in production in many aspects. However there are various kinds of related inquiry methods and each method has different characters according to the data traits, the participant's condition of inquiry, and the participant's number in needing inquiry. So it is very important to choose appropriate method fits in the inquiry purpose and the proceeding situation so that these inquiry methods are applied to mobile phone domain. Thereafter this study addresses the simple cases of nine inquiry methods which were applied for me purpose of finding out mobile phone needs/ new function, and then describes the result of this research as the following subjects. What significant data does each method have contrasted with the others? What methods can make out synergy effect when they match together? What methods can be omitted and are necessary to extract variable data from participants according to the purpose of inquiry? © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.