Designers should also use a combination of conceptual and behavioural prototypes to reach their final design. Behavioural prototypes demonstrate how a new product, environment, or interface may function rather then how it may look.
DISCOVERY
New human factors include methods to understand the broad terrain of human needs in a methodical way. The needs, people may not even know they have. These processes extend far beyond the focus groups and surveys applied in traditional marketing. Employing the principles of human factors, in combination with ethnographic observation methods, can help product developers to create value-rich products that not only satisfy but also delight their users. That usually guarantees long-term success on the market for the producer. Understanding of the physical human factors helps designers to create products, environments, software, and systems that can fit the physiological capability of users. NASA space research also led to important understanding about physical needs in extreme environments for living and working in the modern world. Understanding of the cognitive human factors helps researchers to understand how people receive, process, and understand information. The research helps designers to respond to cognitive patterns. This becomes critical as we incorporate increasingly complex information into products and services. Understanding of the social human factors helps designers to create products, environments, software, and systems that enable people, to work more effectively either individually or in teams. This is increasingly vital to the emerging networked society. However, regardless of the emerging trend toward collaborative work, almost all of today’s products that support work, such as office furniture and computer hardware and software, have been designed for people working individually. The understanding of the cultural human factors helps the product developers to avoid creation of products, environments, software, and systems, that conflict with values and patterns of behaviour. It is always difficult to grasp the cultural influences on human perception, yet such understanding is essential when developing products for new markets, or new products for current markets.
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