Framing product design: using design communication to facilitate user learning

Industrial design has become a key source of competitive advantage and strategic focus to companies in the 1990s. The rapid emergence of the information age, the proletarianization of computer technology, and the need for continual improvements in worker productivity have driven companies to seek ways to enhance worker productivity. The limiting factor, however, is not technology, but workers′ ability to use it effectively. Focusses on design communication, and specifically product framing, and its role in facilitating the interface between worker and technology in business and industrial markets. Product framing encourages users to compare new products with, or “think of”the new product in terms of, a frame of reference with which they already might be familiar. Product framing thus accelerates learning and adoption. Defines, illustrates and categorizes product framing and reports the results of a pilot test.