Usability Problems: the Influence of User Diversity

In spite of the enormous progress over the last decades in technology and design consumer dissatisfaction is increasingly mainly caused by soft usability problems people experience. The mismatch between expectations and real use is influenced on the one hand by product characteristics and on the other hand by user characteristics. Therefore, this study focuses on how user diversity is related to the occurrence of soft usability problems in terms of user characteristics. To investigate how user characteristics interact with soft usability problems in actual product use an experiment was conducted with 23 American, 33 South Korean and 22 Dutch people. The study concludes that participants’ background including culture influences the kind of soft usability problems and they differ per product. On the basis of these data user profiles are formulated which in relation with electronic consumer products provide design guidelines to a design team.