Browsing by Subject "product design"

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    For the Love of Technology: How Aesthetics Define Emotions in a Digital Education Setting
    (2021) Brower, Autumn
    Educators often admit that they are aware that emotion plays a significant role in students’ educational success, yet most of the scientific literature measures cognition in education to the exclusion of emotion. This study is intended to be a proof of concept design for future research. Its goal is to assess how an individual’s aesthetic value of a product might be a way to gauge emotion in educational settings. Three faculty members at the University of Minnesota were interviewed about their viewpoints pertaining to the product design of a static Canvas page and asked to evaluate its design based on its visceral, behavioral, and reflective beauty. Page orientation and font were used to represent product design. Results of the interviews showed that readability was the most frequently mentioned reason people are drawn to certain aesthetic features of a product’s design in digital education, followed by alignment, accessibility, mobile devices, tradition, and font personalities. Additionally, this paper evaluates the participants’ valence response; their responses to the design’s functionality; and their thoughts on meaningfulness as they relate to Norman’s (2007) three aesthetic levels of product design. At the end of the paper, suggestions for how we might use this data to increase productivity in our classes and enhance educational technology are addressed. Future directions for how these results might apply to cognition, emotion, and computation are also discussed.
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    Value Creation, Appropriation, And Product Design Strategies In Technology Ecosystems: Three Essays On The Role Of Complementary Technologies
    (2017-05) Miller, Cameron
    Firms are often embedded in a technology ecosystem comprised of complementary technologies that span multiple product markets. In this dissertation, I examine how complementarity between the firm’s technologies influences its strategies to create and appropriate value in the ecosystem. I investigate this overarching question in two contexts: firm’s participation in compatibility standards and how it designs products for a new market. In Chapter 2 and 3, I explore how complementarity within the firm’s technology portfolio affects how and where it creates and appropriates value from intellectual property disclosures to major compatibility standards. In Chapter 2, I theorize as to how a portfolio of complementary technologies allows the firm to create value from its technological position in an industry standard. I empirically test my prediction using data on major compatibility standards in the information and communications technology industry. I find that firms generate positive returns from disclosure only when they own complementary technologies. In Chapter 3, I extend this argument to study value appropriation. I find that firms focus their appropriation strategy around their complementary technologies. Chapter 4 examines how product complementarities influence product strategy in a new market. I propose that firms with complementary products will enter markets with products that exhibit lower technical performance than firms without complementary products. I also argue that firms choose features that function with their complementary products and will tradeoff non-complementary features when necessary. Examining entry into the nascent smartphone market using a rich set of data on smartphone product technology and features, I find strong support for these conclusions. I identify complementarities within the firm’s product portfolio as an important driver of firm’s product strategy. Through this dissertation, I demonstrate the benefit of a more systemic view of the firm’s portfolio, one that appreciates the relationships between the firm’s various technologies and products, and how these relationships influence the firm’s technology strategy.