A survey of what customers want in a cell phone design

Abstract

The cell phone is an information appliance that has been widely used. It provides instant access to information and makes people more ‘connected’. The objective of our study is to investigate the relationship among the design features of the cell phone and identify the most important design features and design factors. In our survey study, we asked 1,006 college students using a 7-point Likert scale structured questionnaire to evaluate their preference of the design features and overall satisfaction of their current cell phone. Nine design factors were derived. Ten cell phone design features and five design factors that significantly impact a user's satisfaction were identified. The most important design features are: the physical appearance, size and menu organisation, which together account for 42% of the total variance of a user's overall satisfaction.

Keywords:

• Cell phone
• Design
• Customers
• User preferences

Acknowledgement

We want to give sincere thanks to the students in the Job Design classes in the spring semester of 2004 at Purdue University for their effort of data collecting in this study. This work was supported by the Soongsil University Research Fund.