Application of Behavioral Approach in Product Design Based on User Center Design

Abstract
Childhood is a critical era of life which has the ability to significantly improve the behavioral, educational and social aspects of individuals. Identification of suitable environment of growing up along with a real insight into child's needs, help researchers and designers to gradually step towards improving the personal and behavioral characteristics of the next generation. Seemingly the social environments play fundamental role in effectiveness of interactions of children with each other and the surrounding environments. The parks and children’s playgrounds are the most especial environments which have the ability to develop the children’s social behavior and their relationships with others. This paper aims to target the children’s behavior by means of designing a set of furniture for playgrounds. The selected approach is behavioral design in tandem with user centered design (UCD). Previous approaches while fruitful have focused partially on user’s behavior - especially children- and at the expense of an overall understanding. Yet this paper is to isolate recurring user’s behaviors such as supportive ones, desired ones, and unwanted ones and note their frequency in a certain period of time within the specific context of children’s playground. In order to influence user behavior, both product design and system design offer potential ways of improving performance and reducing user error. User behavior can be guided through design. It is not only important to focus on the user needs and characteristics, but also it is equally critical to focus on how products influence people. Interaction design talks about influencing user behavior. On the other hand, user-centered design tries to incorporate the user's perspective into the design process in order to achieve a usable product. There are five essential steps defined for UCD; planning the user-centered design process, understanding the context of use, specification of user requirements, production of prototypes, and carrying out user-based assessments. This paper is based on a comprehensive study about the behavioral design which later faces up to user centered design methodology in the author's master's thesis. The study was to identify and define the user's requirements, context of use, and design commitments. Afterwards the phase of designing the product started and the output got evaluated by the experts. According to the results of their evaluation, the weaknesses of the product were eliminated and the resulting output got evaluated again by the experts of Tehran beautification organization. This paper mainly tries to achieve the concept of affecting user’s behavior by means of persuading, enabling and encouraging people. At the first stage different strategies persuade people to perform special behaviors. Then, at the second stage they should become enabled enough to perform the intended behavior. Finally, at the third stage, people get encouraged to do the intended behavior repeatedly. The article is pursued by evaluations which support the concept of affecting the user behavior by means of the proposed behavioral model. Besides, some practical strategies are proposed on the final part to facilitate considering user behavior through the design process.