Usefulness Simulation of Design Concepts

Abstract

Usefulness, from the utilitarianism perspective, is the ability of a product or service to improve the well-being of humans and to minimize their suffering in different situations. In the case of the widespread issue of falls among the elderly, designing an adapted solution to is not an obvious task. The latter requires quantifying various usage scenarios. The usage scenarios, or segments, associated with elderly falls must be investigated to ensure that newly designed products and services are likely to bring essential health, social, and economic values. Optimizing a design solution by considering the coverage of such usage segments extends the classical methods of design for market approaches. Starting from a disparate literature on elderly falls’ issue, we have first built a usage scenarios space. Next, the usefulness and the coverage ability of three design solutions are evaluated over a tessellation of usage segments. In addition, the developed usage simulator is used to assess the potential of non or poorly covered usage segments to deliver insightful information in order to truly be a need seeker in the front-end of innovation.