Development of a usability evaluation method using natural product-use motion

The present study developed and tested a new usability evaluation method which considers natural product-use motions. The proposed method measures both natural product-use motions (NMs) and actual product-use motions (AMs) for a product using an optical motion capture system and examines the usability of the product based on motion similarity (MS; %) between NMs and AMs. The proposed method was applied to a usability test of four vacuum cleaners (A, B, C, and D) with 15 participants and their MSs were compared with EMG measurements and subjective discomfort ratings. Cleaners A (44.6%) and C (44.2%) showed higher MSs than cleaners B (42.9%) and D (41.7%); the MSs mostly corresponded to the EMG measurements, which could indicate that AMs deviated from NMs may increase muscular efforts. However, the MSs were slightly different from the corresponding discomfort ratings. The proposed method demonstrated its usefulness in usability testing, but further research is needed with various products to generalize its effectiveness.