Vol.4 No.3 2012

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Research paper : Designing products and services based on understanding human cognitive behavior (M. Akamatsu et al.)−151−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.4 No.3 (2012) Whether they are products or service, the design is constructed based on the findings obtained by the CCE method, and the specific requirements of the plan and the prototypes with functions to be realized are created. The ways to realize them are reviewed, and realistic specifications are created, considering the current technology level and the service provision environment. In some cases, the decision may be that the product cannot be realized with the current technology level, and the plan must be terminated. The prototype is built based on the specification, the trials are done using the expected target user under the target situation, and the evaluation is obtained. In case of a product, since development cost and time are needed, it is necessary to conduct the experimental evaluations at various stages of the development process to make sure the project does not wander in the wrong direction. However, in case of service, the service can be implemented more easily compared to products, and the new service can be incorporated into the actual service provision process. The survey is done by executing the service, seeing that the service expected by the service designer is provided to the target user, observing whether the service is effective, and improving the plan by understanding where the problem lies if the service does not seem effective. By turning this cycle of the hypothesis testing, the service provided is made compatible with the user[17].6 DiscussionFrom the analysis of the Synthesiology papers, Kobayashi et al. indicate that the way of synthesis when realizing the product to be used in society by integrating the elemental technologies differs according to the technological field[18]. For example, in the research fields that handle the materials themselves such as nanotechnology, and device technology, the researcher can utilize the knowledge of natural sciences, clarify the elemental technologies and the factors that affect the subjects, and select what must be done for synthesis. On the other hand, in the research fields that handle daily living and in some life sciences, the researcher may take the spiral approach where the product or service is introduced to society and advances are made as evaluations are obtained, because not only are there multiple factors, but also because there are many unknown factors. However, unless the product or service that is being introduced initially has high prospect for acceptance in society, it will not diffuse in society even in the spiral approach. To prevent such failure, it is necessary to have a method that allows the factors and elemental technologies for the acceptance of the product or service to be clarified as much as possible and to be examined beforehand. The CCE method extracts and structurizes the variables for the target user in the actual usage situations, and aims to take a similar approach as the synthetic research in the field of material science, in the sense that the factors that affect the cognitive behavior under investigation are clarified and what must be selected for synthesis is determined.Although it is similar to the research approach for materials, it does not have the same level of preciseness of natural science. Although hypothetical field experiments are done for the selection of the elite monitor and the critical parameter, it is difficult to show the validity of the hypothesis through statistical testing of the results. In CCE, there are only a few participants of the experiment as elite monitors. There may be only a few chances once or twice a day to make a certain situation constant when conducting the field experiment. For example, if the research involves railway use, the time zone when the experiment can be conducted is limited if the researcher wishes to avoid the effect of crowding. Also, there is no exactly-the-same action taken in the actual daily scene, and the analysis may remain qualitative. For example, if the majority of a certain category of experimental participants takes the same behavior and the behavior is not seen in other categories, it can be concluded that the categorization hypothesis was not wrong. Therefore, it is not hypothesis testing in the natural scientific sense. The natural scientific hypothesis testing may be possible if the scale of experiment is expanded, but considering that the same situation is not repeated in actual daily situations, the testing by reproducibility would be essentially impossible. The everyday situation in which we use the product or service changes continuously and we are never subject to the same situation. Therefore, we must be aware that there is a limit on depending on the natural scientific methodology. However, if we abandon the natural scientific research approach for understanding the factors that affect the phenomenon, we cannot reduce the gap to obtain acceptance of the product or service in society.In the sense that research subjects are daily situations, the CCE is similar to the sociological method. Ethnography as a sociological method aims to understand society, or to seek the behavioral principles common to human groups or society by describing the behavior of humans in society just as they are[11] Note 7). In contrast, the CCE clarifies the differences in individual characteristics and adds experimental control such as setting the situation. This is a synthetic research approach for the purpose of constructing the product or service, and the insight for designing the product or service can be obtained by introducing the elite monitor and the critical parameter. If the product or service is constructed based on the findings of CCE, and the product or service becomes more acceptable to the user by turning the cycle of evaluation, then the validity of the findings obtained can be investigated, and the product or service acceptable to society can be realized.It is not easy to realize a good product or service by thinking inside the developer’s mind only. By using CCE, the product or service can be designed effectively. In the evaluation for the usage, the cycle of improvement and optimization can work efficiently by clarifying the viewpoints of function of the product or service.

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