Introduction

The need for continued research into PE is considerable, especially considering the paucity of substantial academic work on the subject. In this concluding chapter, the contribution of this research is presented by elucidating how the five research questions have been answered. Furthermore, reflections on limitations and suggestions for future research are given.

Reflections on the research questions

Future research

There are ample opportunities for continuing interdisciplinary research in the field of PE and strategic design. The in-depth exploration of selected management and design frameworks and models as well as analysis of design and design research projects have provided a good starting point for aligning PE with strategic design and repositioning this emergent field of ergonomics within broader contexts of innovation and strategic management. Moreover, this research has attempted to position selected cases within strategic management, worldview, strategic design and design reasoning frameworks.

A very important finding is that prospective ergonomic characteristics apply foremost to projects which are positioned in the systemic strategy quadrant, underlining the collaborative and pragmatic nature of these projects. In these projects, designers complement problem solving approaches with hermeneutic and reflective modes of thinking. With respect to stakeholder involvement and alliance building, these designers advocate the implementation of participatory and creative design methods to anticipate future needs.

However, concerning the development of methods and tools, more empirical data needs to be gathered to ascertain the positioning of PE relative to strategic design within strategic management and innovation frameworks. Examples of research topics which are relevant to be studied to advance the methodology of PE are as follows:

• – the development of systemic frameworks, methods and tools which can be applied across strategic management, strategic design, PE and industrial design;
• – the development of creative methods and tools which can promote lateral thinking in design to anticipate prospective user needs;
• – the creation of design education programs/courses, where an emphasis is placed on bridging the gap between theory and practice in collaborative project work. This means introducing real-life cases and companies as early as possible in the program;
• – the adaptation of prospective ergonomic principles to promote more constructive and reflective ways of designing. Referring to Whittington’s processual quadrant as a foundation for one stream of design thinking, what type of emergent strategic and industrial design processes, methods and tools can be developed and what will the prospective ergonomic intervention be?

From a thematic viewpoint, six prospective ergonomic areas, which will be interesting to explore with respect to future research endeavors as well as for the Norwegian economy, will be elaborated in the following sections.

Healthcare and welfare design

Complex healthcare environments render it necessary that a holistic and systematic ergonomic approach be adopted to understand the potential for accidents and errors to occur [BUC 06]. In the last decade, these holistic principles of ergonomics have been employed in different dimensions of the healthcare sector. Ergonomists have advocated to actively consider the needs of all stakeholders by promoting a multifaceted and comprehensive approach in the healthcare sector to minimize the burden of occupational hazards. However, it is unknown whether a prospective-oriented approach toward ergonomic intervention in the healthcare sector has been explored.

Only a few studies have evaluated interventions to reduce injuries among healthcare workers based on worker education programs, physical conditioning, or the use of occupational ergonomic interventions. However, education alone, in the absence of work modifications, is not effective in reducing back injuries among healthcare workers. Physical conditioning, complemented with the utilization of mechanical assistive devices, has therefore been suggested as a preventive ergonomic measure to reduce injuries among healthcare workers [GAR 92, OWE 95, CHA 91, FEL 93].

To promote a holistic value-innovation perspective in the development of the healthcare sector, it is essential to adopt a prospective ergonomic approach to anticipate future products and services. Hereby, it is critical to extend management support to ensure the overall success of the ergonomic process [UNI 15]. In addition, interventions in the form of involvement of workers, patients and other stakeholders through participatory ergonomic and design sessions facilitate early identification of core health issues as well as ancillary arrangements which need to be put in place. A prospective ergonomic intervention in the design of tasks, routines, workspaces, tools, lighting and equipment is needed to match the health workers’ physical capabilities and limitations with future patient needs as well as expectations from a broader community of actors who have a stake in healthcare.

In terms of future research in healthcare and welfare design, it would be productive to explore the intersection between “products & services”, and “processes and methods” and how a prospective design thinking approach in these two areas may change attitudes, behaviors and norms within occupational ergonomics among the different stakeholders. In practice, this means that in contrast to the more common “top-down’’ safety programs, participatory ergonomics and design may more effectively take advantage of worker knowledge and problem solving skills, reduce resistance to change and improve workplace communication and worker motivation, as well as facilitate in the anticipation for future products and services [GJE 94, MOO 96].

Inclusive design

According to Clarkson and Coleman [CLA 15, p. 235], inclusive design is designing for disabled and elderly people as a subset of the population and is an integral part of a more recent international trend toward integrating older and disabled people in the mainstream of society.

From a business perspective, design activities should aim at offering high-quality and attractive products and services which may reveal prospective business avenues for imaginative entrepreneurs.

With respect to targeting the public sector and focusing on legislation, it is a challenge to integrate older people as active, participating and contributing members of society in a comparable way to disabled people. This requires us to adopt a consumer-based approach within inclusive design, which is all about developing products and services that delight the end-user rather than stigmatize and alienate them.

Complementing future research plans as described in the section “Reflections on the research questions (see Research questions 1 and 5), it would be interesting to find out what differentiates “good design” from “special needs” design, as well as to generate insights into integrating “good” and “special needs” design.

Good design is about making conscious and well-informed decisions throughout the design process. A great product or service is typically built on a foundation of understanding the real needs of the user and other stakeholders. Within the context of the “business of inclusive design”, good design should not aim for pure profit maximization but also target a broader range of objectives within contextual frames of society and legislation.

Service design

The focus in service design is to innovate and improve services which are on the one hand useful, usable and desirable from a user perspective and on the other hand efficient and effective from a management and organizational viewpoint [MAG 11, MOR 05]. More specifically, good service design adds value to user experiences when applied to service sectors such as retailing, banking, transportation and healthcare [STI 10], as well as strategically facilitating a better positioning of service offerings among service providers [MAG 11].

From a strategic management and innovation perspective, service design is less about competition and context and more about reducing the gap between what organizations do and what users expect or need [PAR 06]. Given this aim, services need to be understood as a journey of critical encounters that take place over time and across channels. Hereby, human-to-human or human-to-product interactions centered on “experiencing” before, during and after the service encounter are considered essential.

The human-centered approach investigates or seeks to understand people’s experiences as users, service staff and communities or with interactions and practices as a main source for redesigning or imagining new services [MER 11, p. 203].

Users are diverse and possess a wide variety of capabilities, needs and desires. Employees and decision makers within organizations are not simply detached calculating individuals interacting in purely economic transactions but people who are embedded in social relations that may involve their families, state, professional and educational backgrounds, religion and ethnicity [SWE 87, WHI 92].

Within this area, I am planning to make a human-centered strategic link between service design and PE. New theories, frameworks, processes and methods, which should embody this human-centered strategic link, need to be developed and applied in a wide variety of contexts.

Interaction design within the context of culture, acculturation and globalization

“The world is neither a closed system in an ultra-stable steady-state, nor an open one with an inexhaustible supply of energy, water and raw materials, but one whose dynamics calls for a continuing evolution of society, and with it a corresponding evolution of ergonomics and human factor methods to deal with the new problems which will continue to emerge both in the workplace and in society at large” [MOR 00, p. 858].

The above citation clearly presents the ergonomic and cultural challenge with respect to interaction design and social innovation. However, when discussing culture and acculturation in relation to present and future societal developments, the effects of globalization are becoming increasingly evident in the development of services and products. On the one hand, through the influence of multinationals and mass media communication and information, globalization has reached a level of homogeneity among cultures. In other words, globalization strives for cultural compatibility by destroying diversity or ignoring cultural identity. However, some authors like Fernandes [FER 95], appear to be promoting culturalization as a means of opposing “cultural homogenization” by claiming that the global process of homogenization may provoke people to be more aware of their national and cultural identities.

On the other hand, globalization can be seen as a motivator for some originally homogenous societies to become heterogeneous multicultural societies. Some societies have embraced globalization, while others oppose it or are selective [SHE 06].

The above discussion poses the question of whether a localization or globalization approach should be adopted in the development of products, services and human-computer interaction interfaces with respect to enhancement of the user experience.

For future research, I am proposing to further develop a methodology for strategic goal finding based upon acculturation insights, derived from social, cultural, technological, economic and political differences among regions. The development of such a methodology implies the selection of empirical research methods to gain better insights on how to design products, user interfaces and services, bearing in mind cultural differences and globalization trends. These methods are as follows:

• – persona development and selection;
• – scenario building and reflection;
• – cultural confrontation of scenarios;
• – case study research.

In my past case study research work, the diversity of case studies, each leading to a proposed design concept, has demonstrated that a cultural and contextual approach toward strategic design should be further explored in the development of user interface systems and products in the Fuzzy-Front-End of Innovation (FEI).

The process of illustrating framed cases and assessing possible extreme social, political and economical effects in certain societies can identify potential areas for innovation. The framing and assessment occur by mapping showing extreme situations of a case on a bipolar scale, supported by cultural dimensions.

The purpose of developing these methods in a more integrative manner is to build a database of cases, to be refined and updated from time-to-time, which can be further developed into a methodology for creative inspiration in the product planning and goal finding stages of the strategic design process. In other words, once matured, such a database comprising diverse cases can be used as a resource for deepening the external analysis as well as generating innovative system/product ideas, while considering the prevalent economic, social and political status quo of cultures. Furthermore, theme-specific cases can be clustered to develop cultural bipolar scales as a source to better understand global tension fields with respect to social, economic, political and environmental developments worldwide.

Aesthetics and experience design

User experience influences the individual’s belief about himself/herself and his/her physical appearance. It is conceived as the sensation of how someone perceives and interprets something that they are surrounded by and how one sees possibilities for the next interaction [PHO 15].

User experience encompasses more than just satisfaction. Satisfaction is associated directly with aesthetics, which has to do with emotions, a common quality between aesthetics and user satisfaction [NIE 99].

The individual’s judgment about aesthetics, beauty, or what is pleasing is based upon personal, social and cultural background (user experience).

However, recent research has shown that the positive effect of an aesthetically appealing product on perceived usability begins to wane with increasing exposure time [SON 12]. This means that focusing on corrective and preventive ergonomics has its limitations in the design of aestheticdriven products with respect to prospection.

Aesthetics and meaning-making research should therefore be conducted within the context of innovation. In other words, my research interest within this area is driven by the notion that consumers in mature economies are always enticed by the emotional qualities of a product. To be more specific, they are scouting for forms which embody new meanings and aesthetics. Within the context of “pleasurable” experiences, which forms the foundation for research in meaning-making and aesthetics, personal, cultural and emotional aspects as well as systemic constraints and possibilities should be addressed in the development of new products and services.

Transportation design

Transportation in its many forms has undergone significant transformations to meet the needs of a changing age-diverse society, which has implications for design, research and policies for both older and younger adults across a broad range of contexts.

For example, baby boomers prefer personal transportation specifically in the form of a personal vehicle because of the following two reasons:

• – they find it hard and confusing to use crowdsourcing and app-based transportation guidance, making public transportation navigation and use a frustrating experience;
• – most likely, they prefer to use private transportation because they live in areas that do not have good public transportation [DEG 11, FIS 09, TUR 12].

On the contrary, the younger population is driving less and frequently uses public transportation, ride sharing and other transportation alternatives. They consistently respond well to crowdsourcing and app-based transportation guidance [DAV 12, DEL 13, PUE 12]. These needs require researchers to evaluate the design of systems to manage the conflicting desires, abilities, cultural and demographic factors, as well as personal goals related to different age groups from anywhere between 20 to 60 years. In these systemic cases, it might be productive to create either adaptable or redundant systems where way-finding guidance is included in the physical environment of transportation hubs.

As the health and activity gap between older and younger adults is narrowing, it has become easier to introduce inclusive design solutions. However, this may not be the case for all in-vehicle automation situations where human factor solutions for one typical age group may not apply for another. For instance, augmented in-vehicle automation, which is accepted and desired by tech-savvy youth, may lead to overreliance and subsequently skill degradation [PAR 97]. On the contrary, older adults are more averse to automation and resistant to advances such as automatic braking and self-driving cars. At the same time, age deteriorates the sensory abilities to perceive safety-critical alarms. For example, an alarm that is loud enough to be reliably heard by a driver in her 70s may be extremely intrusive to a much younger driver.

Another example showing different views with respect to vehicle design concerns the design and development of special vehicles such as fire engines, police cars and ambulances. Two different approaches can be identified in the interior design and customization of these vehicles. The first is defined as vehicle integrative customization and the second as vehicle adaptive customization. Integrative customization in vehicle design is the implementation of various equipment and devices without compromising on the existing features and space. It is only practically achievable when the design, fabrication and installation of the customized features have been completed in concurrence with the manufacturing of the vehicle itself. On the other hand, adaptive customization in vehicle design can be implemented during or at any stage after the manufacturing of the vehicle. This implies that the quality of adaptive customization may vary from a crude add-on to a neatly hidden solution, such as the placement of equipment behind the cladding/dashboard of the vehicle.

The above examples show that there are clear tension fields in the areas of transportation and vehicle design which are befitted to be solved through innovative product service systems solutions, where prospective ergonomic intervention is considered to be essential.

Summary of future research directions, relevant for prospective ergonomics

Figure 1 shows a consolidated view of my intended future research work centered on PE. I am particularly interested in how prospective ergonomic intervention should contribute to each of the six thematic fields through research and design. With respect to each field, I am targeting the juxtaposition of (1) processes, methods and tools, (2) perspectives and mindsets and (3) challenges as focal areas for reflection with PE (see Figure 1).

Case example: versatile mailbox

From a practice point of view, I would like to introduce a design project which illustrates the connectivity between service, welfare and transportation design within the context of prospective ergonomics. The project concerns the development of a “versatile mailbox” (Postkasse 3.0) which extends the delivery of non-perishable objects to include medication and perishable items (Figure 2). Besides the functional aspects of mail delivery, the overarching social, technological, economic, environmental and political context of a social-democratic society, such as Norway, will be challenged.

From current to future context

Increasing levels of e-commerce, transitioning from paper mail to digital mail, rising popularity for food delivery and new markets allowing for delivery of medication fundamentally restructure public life and require a rethinking of the functionality of mailboxes (Figure 2).

• – What if mailboxes could receive and send items?
• – What if the inside of mailboxes could be controlled to ensure a specified temperature range?
• – What if everything could arrive right at the door step whether someone is home or not?

Project brief

The “versatile mailbox” (Postkasse 3.0) is intended to explore such possibilities and aims to redefine the mailbox as a place of mutual exchange.

When rethinking the mailbox in a future Norwegian context, it becomes obvious that it would make a mailbox more relevant if its functionality would include sending besides only receiving goods. Such a development would make the mailbox a more meaningful place of exchange, facilitating e-commerce through, for example, simplifying receiving and returning of desired items. As such, postal activities will be decentralized and relocated to the home of the individual, rendering him or her able to send and receive packages without making trips to the nearest post office.

Creating such a medium of exchange, allowing for secure and controlled storage, opens new business opportunities for food and medication delivery as well as the provision of specialized nutrition to elderly people with specific dietary needs.

As per today, the mailbox is positioned at the intersection of the private and the public realm (Figure 3). It would facilitate the participation of a wider range of stakeholders by creating meaningful and relevant services for its owners and increased operational efficiency for different service providers.

Processes, methods and stakeholder involvement

The project scope was limited to an extensive design research and concept generation process. In the design research stage, semistructured interviews were undertaken with different stakeholders. These stakeholders include public and private postal services, pharmacists, city councils, care takers, elderly homes, grocery home delivery services, etc. In the idea generation and conceptualization stages, different scenarios and design proposals were sketched and subjected to potential stakeholders in individual one-to-one as well as group participatory sessions.

Figure 4 exemplifies a schematic diagram of the relationships among the various stakeholders, where the “versatile mailbox” functions as facilitation platform for the exchange of goods and services. The diagram illustrates the variety of private and public actors benefitting from the service potential it provides. While the left side of the illustration focuses on businesses and organizations, the right side highlights various end user groups. After having identified these stakeholder groups, the graph can visually represent how individual actors can be coupled in order to offer service innovations, such as food delivery or advanced home medication for elderly.

Results

Rethinking parcel delivery, however, does not necessarily mean having mailboxes as physical interfaces between the public and the private realm. For example, the Antwerp-based company “Cardrops” uses the car of the parcel recipient as interface.

Most importantly, the versatile mailbox should be perceived as a pivotal point between the private and public realm within a larger product service system improving the convenience of home delivery. The Norwegian private and public service sector is currently being subjected to significant challenges. A tremendous growth in the food delivery sector as well as new regulations in the medication market and rising popularity of e-commerce requires innovative distribution channels. The “versatile mailbox” is one of them, aimed at dual income families coupled with busy schedules and the elderly with limited mobility. Moreover, on the service provision side, it aims to alleviate the pressure on delivery companies to deliver goods at predetermined and selective timeslots.