The Integration Project

A New Educational Model for Interactive Product Design

Validating Utility, Performance, and Experience

Jim Budd and Ron Wakkary | Simon Fraser University, Surrey

Part I: Responding to Technological and Social Change

New technologies are fundamentally changing the way we learn, work, and play. Technical
knowledge and understanding alone are inadequate to deal effectively with many of the
implications of new technology. This raises questions concerning both what technology can do
and what technology should do. In either case, the products, systems, and services we create
with new technology are of little value if we can’t readily understand what they are, what they do
and how to use them.

From our perspective, one of the keys to addressing the complexity of interaction is a balanced
understanding of both the technical (utilitarian and performance) issues and human (social and
cultural) considerations [5]. To ensure our solutions to these complex problems do in fact meet
design expectations, it will be critical to integrate an active prototype testing and validation
process into the design development cycle. We believe this must also be part of the education
process.

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