Poor Design Causes Product Returns

March 7, 2006

According to a Reuters report from yesterday, a scientist from the Netherlands is reporting that half of products returned as defective are actually in working order. Although companies usually shrug this off, researcher Elke den Ouden of the Technical University of Eindhoven�found that the real reason people return products�is that they can't figure out how they work.

If you've ever worked in the areas of human-computer interaction, usability and user experience, this would be no surprise to you. Product designers, developers�and engineers often think that their products are friendly and easy to use, but in reality designers are not good judges of their own products' usability.�Incorporating user testing in the design process can help identify usability problems early in the process, and it can be enlightening to make designers sit down and watch while normal users struggle to perform the simplest tasks with the great product they have created.

Sounds as if den Ouden did some similar testing in connection with her study. The Reuters report says that when product designers were brought in to observe consumers trying to use their products, they "were astounded by the havoc they created."

AB -- 3/7/06

Related Tags: products, designers, product, usability