Socio-Cultural Factors for New Product Acceptance in Home Environment Design

Abstract

In order to enhance the quality of people's daily life and work through the effective use of pervasive technologies such as network and ubiquitous computing technologies, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which people accept and integrate a new product and service into their lives. Since new technologies can deeply pervade daily life, consideration of cognitive and socio-cultural dimensions becomes increasingly important for successful design and deployment of new products. The notion of product acceptance raises questions such as how is the product positioned, how is it integrated in the existing organization of the user's mental and behavioral spaces, how does it generate meanings and values for users, and how does it become a part of the user's cultural construct. This research first examines and proposes a model of new product introduction and product evolution stages in the culture formation cycle. Then the role of user knowledge and learning in the product acceptance process is examined in order to explain the mechanism of user acceptance and develop a structural assessment methodology that effectively incorporates cultural dimensions for design decisions. This methodology is effective also for introducing new concepts to system design such as sustainability and universality as well as for introducing new technologies. As a research information platform, Modular Script Scenario method previously developed by the authors was used for incorporating many different dimensions of socio-cultural aspects of product acceptance.