Please Make Me Warm: Combining Product Emotions and Usability to Redesign Microwave Products

Abstract

Microwave oven is one of everyday products with many types and brands offering similar functionalities and capabilities. These similarities create tough competition, and in this case, product usability and users’ emotional responses to product appearance often become key determinants of purchasing decision. This research combines product emotions measurement and usability testing to evaluate and redesign existing microwave products. Modified PrEmo was used to measure positive and negative emotional responses of thirty participants to three different microwaves. Usability testing involving eight participants was then conducted to the product receiving the most negative emotional reactions. Through these procedures, usability problems and product features that evoked positive emotions were identified and analyzed. The redesign of the microwave encompassed its physical form, color, control panel, and display. Three redesign alternatives were generated, each of which was evaluated using the previous methods. It was found that all alternatives resulted in better usability and product emotions scores, where alternative 3 produced the highest total (combined) score.