Design Relationships- Integrating User Information into Product Development

'Dr. Galvao has produced a well grounded methodology for making andmanaging design decisions.''Tom MacTavish Vice PresidentHuman Interaction Research Motorola LabsCompanies focusing on technical innovation are making products that placeever higher demands on users' abilities to understand and operate them. Innovationfails and resources are lost when products do not match user-interactionrequirements. This book examines how to design user-product relationshipsinto the core of a product's architecture based on the informationfrom product functions and user studies. Introduced is a Function-Task-Interaction methodology that identifies represents and quantifies theserelationships and is supported by three case studies and an informationsystem. The methodology presented is based on the concept of affordancesand the first academic paper on it received the XEROX-ASME Best PaperAward at the 2005 Design Theory and Methodology Conference. This book isintended for professionals researchers and students in the fields of designengineering architecture and marketing.