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Steelcase Steelcase is a world leader in office furniture design and manufacture. Steelcase has an extensive knowledge of ergonomics, enabling them to design competitive and comfortable office furniture. Steelcase products include office chairs, desks and architectural solutions.
I worked with the French branch of Steelcase, located in Strasbourg. I worked closely with the R&D, marketing and design departments. |
Designing an office chair for the european market In order to gain shares in the competitive european market, Steelcase decided to develop an office chair specifically for the european market. Indeed, emotional preferences vary considerably from one culture to the next, and an office chair that is successful in the US is not necessarily successful in France or Germany. An emotional design approach Steelcase contacted me to help them define the emotional and sensory preferences of three sub-groups of european consumers:
I conducted user testing in Steelcase's Paris Showroom, and defined the protocole for further testing in England and Germany. The knowledge of users' emotional preferences served as a design brief and guideline to design the new Steelcase office chair, Junior. The results of my studies are in the process of being published in the International Journal of Applied Ergonomics.
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Step 1: defining a target population The first step was to define criteria to select target populations in France, England and Germany. We focused on users in their mid-thirties, with a white-colar job and therefore familiar with an office environment. We specifically chose urban subjects. Also, we avoided talking to furniture experts (such as Steelcase employees or furniture retailers), in order not to be fed back well-known steelcase marketing arguments.
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