Parts of life: configuring equipment to individual lifestyle

Usability is the standard criterion for interactive products in human factors engineering and can be measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and satisfaction. Yet many products that satisfy these criteria are not used and in the past have faded away from the product scene. Other products that do not satisfy these criteria at all may be used quite extensively and have sometimes found wide, if not global, acceptance. There must be other factors than usability that predispose people to use particular products. On the basis of an evaluation study on a videophone system, a number of issues have been analysed that throw more light on why people like to use certain products. One important aspect is to what extent interactive products fit into the daily lifestyle and the personal environment of the user. The more complex products get, and the more functionalities they acquire, matching to individual lifestyle becomes more important, and, consequently, the more configurable these products have to be. This is an underestimated aspect of the design of interactive products that apparently will need increasing input from human and cognitive engineering.