The Exploration of Smart Object Design Method-Applying User Experience Five Elements for Smart Object Design from Theory Research to Design Practice

Abstract

The smart object are the products that combines sensors, actuators, memory capabilities, and they can exchange information with a smart phone, allowing users to control them at a distance and to collect data in everyday life. It gradually become the daily necessities around us and it is changing our life into a new age. Technology becomes a vital force to enhance the experience of smart objects. Therefore, technology and user experience had become the elements for smart objects design, this trend also making the design methods (Rowland, etc. 2015) to change from traditional non-smart products to smart products. This research was intended to discuss a new approach to design a smart product by referenced the five elements of user experience theory that proposed by Jesse James Garrett, which is based on user experience of web design. And we assume to use this theoretical model to physical interactive smart objects design, to find whether it could guide to the process of product design from the aspect of user experience, to explore the feasibility and possibility to transform it from the virtual product to the tangible product. What's more, we conducted a smart product design practice as an experiment to verify this hypothesis. Thus, this paper is discussing this theory research as well as the process and the result of this practice.