Bart Nijssen
IM Masters Design Academy Eindhoven
DESIGN IN TIMES OF CRISIS, REVISITED.
research: questionnaire
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Graduation Project Jan. - Jun. 2010
DESIGN IN TIMES OF CRISIS, REVISITED. research: questionnaire
Bart Nijssen
IM Masters Design Academy Eindhoven May 2010 www.bartnijssen.com
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Index Introduction
3
1. Research Question
4
2. Approach
5
3. Set-up
6
4. Results
7
5. Conclusions
20
Acknowledgements
26
Introduction This small book reports on a questionnaire, which is a part of my graduation project “Design in Times of Crisis, Revisited.” at the IM Masters, Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands. During my research on the affordability and perception of prices of daily objects, I was searching for a valid source of information with peoples opinion on this topic. Current literature on design, production processes and consumer cultures is detailed in the costs of production techniques and marketing approaches, but it didn’t contain the ‘hard’ data I was looking for. Why do people find / think that certain objects are cheaper than others? Of course I could answer that question for my own case, but to construct a more valid conclusion I had to have more objective data. For that reason I decided to gather the data by myself in an online questionnaire, which was online on my website for 7 days. An explanation of the process, the research question, the approach and of course my conclusions of this research will be presented in this book. May 2010 Bart Nijssen
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Chapter 1
Research Question As stated in the introduction I believed that the main research of the “Design in Times of Crisis, Revisited.” project needed an objective part which focuses on the perception of prices of the objects we use daily. Therefor I created this questionnaire around 2 questions; Which object (of 2 presented examples) do people believe is cheapest? Why does it make people think that? The outcome of this questionnaire could be a guide in a future design process, because it not only gives visual feedback between two existing chairs, but it also collects peoples motivation, in which they explain what factors make the specific design appear cheaper that the opposing one. By collecting and analyzing these motivations into categories, a clear overview of ‘cheap-making’ aspects is presented. I believe this is valuable data and more relative than only focussing on production cost. The questionnaire consisted out of 12 pages, with 2 pictures of chairs on each page. The respondent was asked to tick the box of the, in his/her opinion cheapest object. They had to choose either one of the 2 chairs, no other option was available. Below the picture a text-box was available to put in their motivation: Why do you think that chair is the cheapest?
With these questions I planned to receive both quantitative data (percentages of chair choices) and objective data (the personal motivations). That last one, had to be analyzed into groups to give a more clear overview. In the questionnaire I use photographs of chairs only. This is done for two reasons; First because also the main part of the research for this project uses the same object. Second, I believe the chair, and more specifically the chair I show in this questionnaire, are quite common to people. It’s one of the daily used objects that we all recognize and which covers a great diversion in quality and designs.
Chapter 2
Approach Setting up a questionnaire obviously can be done in a lot of different ways. First I worked out some examples on paper, to see how they would work when filling them out. The best platform for this questionnaire would be the internet. By putting it online it would be easier to reach a great number of responders and then collect as much answers as possible. An automated questionnaire also it much more efficient in the gathering of all the data because you can directly insert everything in a database. I experienced that online questionnaire services weren’t flexible enough for the ‘ideal’ version of my questionnaire, therefore I decided to build the website and questionnaire by myself. Luckily a good friend and designer with programming skills helped me on the more technical aspect of this web-questionnaire. I made sure that the website looked attractive, to make filling it out more fun. We connected the questionnaire to a database (php+mysql) for gathering the answers, which also made the results more manageable. To get a large numbers of respondents, which is of huge importance when looking for objective data, I used several of my personal networks. Not only did I send out emails to
friends, colleagues and family. I made active use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Also by including the common ‘share’ buttons for these two social networks I enlarge the publicity of my questionnaire. As a mark of gratitude I promised to give away 3 books amongst all the people who helped me out. Probably this worked as a catalyst for people to fill out my questionnaire and to spread the link to my website. The research method gathers two kinds of data. First, for each of the 12 series of chairs, an A or B for which chair the believed was cheapest. This data is easily used for calculating differences in percentages amongst respondents. Secondly, people were asked to leave a small text in which they explain their motivations for that specific choice. This data is collected as a text field, which should be categorized by hand. The categorization of the open questions on the motivation delivered a more grounded input for the final conclusions. By sectioning the respondents answers into groups also the opportunity to show data (figures) is more present. These conclusion can be found in the fifth chapter.
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Chapter 3
Set-up
Screenshot of the online questionnaire, intro page.
Chapter 4
Results The questionnaire was online for a little bit longer than 1 week in total. In the period that started at 15-04-2010 16:00 I reached over 310 respondents who answered my questions of which 258 (which is 82,7% of the total) left their email addresses to make chance on winning one of the books.
>310 respondents
On the following pages the 12 chair-combi’s will be presented together with the result on the question, which one the respondents believed was more cheap. The percentages showed indicate that either A (in red) or B (in black) is indicated as being the cheapest.
12
68
58
48
38
0 28
Also some interesting answers or trends in answer will be highlighted in the conclusion section.
Age / number of respondents 24
18
Further on an analysis of the ‘open question’ informing on the reposondents motivation for their specific choices is presented. Here conclusions will be drawn showing what factors are mentioned that give the examples their cheap ‘appearance’ or ‘perception’. These conclusions can be seen as a guide for designers to base their designdecisions on.
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Chapter 4
Results
1a Chair A: Producer Various Title: ‘Monoblock plastic chair’ Designer: Year: -
1b
7,4%
Chair B Producer Title: Designer: Year: -
92,6% Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
2a
2b
Chair A: Producer: Ikea Title: Urban Designer: C Öjerstam/M Elebäck Year: Chair B Producer: Magis Title: Air Chair Designer: Jasper Morrison Year: 1999
52,1%
47,9%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 4
Results
3a
3b
Chair A: Producer: Ikea Title: Gilbert Designer: Carina Bengs Year: Chair B Producer: Vitra Title: .03 Designer: Maarten van Severen Year: 1999 Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
27,2%
72,8%
4a
4b
Chair A: Producer: Gärsnäs Title: Wood Designer: Åke Axelsson Year: 2009 Chair B Producer: Gärsnäs Title: Wood Designer: Åke Axelsson Year: 2009
27,2%
72,8%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 4
Results
5a Chair A: Producer: Ikea Title: Benjamin Designer: Year: Chair B Producer: Ikea Title: Frosta Designer: Gillis Lundgren Year: Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
5b
30,2%
69,8%
6a Chair A: Producer: Fritz Hansen Title: Series 7 Chair Designer: Arne Jacobsen Year: 1955 Chair B Producer: Ikea Title: Gilbert Designer: Carina Bengs Year: -
6b
36,4%
63,6%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 4
Results
7a Chair A: Producer: Established & Sons Title: standard unique Designer: Maarten Baas Year: 2009
7b
7,6%
Chair B Producer: Ikea Title: Bertil Designer: Nike Karlsson Year: -
92,4% Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
8a Chair A: Producer: Thonet Title: S34 Designer: Mart Stam Year: 1926 Chair B Producer: Ahrend Title: Result Designer: Friso Kramer Year: 1958
8b
15,2%
84,8%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 4
Results
9a Chair A: Producer: Knoll Title: Barcelona Chair Designer: Mies van der Rohe Year: 1950 Chair B Producer: Vitra Title: DCW Designer: R & Ch Eames Year: 1945 Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
9b
15,8%
84,2%
10a Chair A: Producer: Vitra Title: Plastic Side Chair Designer: R & Ch Eames Year: 1950 Chair B Producer: Vitra Title: .03 Designer: Maarten van Severen Year: 1999
10b
23,2%
76,8%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 4
Results
11a
11b
Chair A: Producer: Thonet Title: No. 14 Designer: Thonet Year: 1860 Chair B Producer: Title: Designer: Year: Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
17,6%
82,4%
12a Chair A: Producer: Ikea Title: Jules Designer: Nicholai Wiig Hansen Year: Chair B Producer: Ikea Title: Jeff Designer: K Hagberg/M Hagberg Year: -
12b
15,0%
85,0%
Right: Percentage of respondents find which chair A/B cheapest.
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Chapter 5
Conclusions Overall results The above chapter talks about the diversion between every two examples of chair, of which people have indicated which they believe is cheapest. This clearly creates an understandable and graphic overview of the perception of value between two selected object. However, the most interesting part for us designers lies in peoples motivation for the choices they made. Why do they actually think that one chair is more cheap than the other one? To get clear insights in those thoughts I made an analysis of the motivation that people gave along their choice. Fortunately a large number of respondents took time to explain and enter their motivations, which alltogether made an extensive mass of data. For every single question I got around 300 people to also give their motivation. Obviously their description contains huge variety, while they sometimes emphasize on the same aspect. Therefor the first step in this analysis was categorizing every single answer into a set of groups. Immediately you could see ‘trends’ appear like; cheap because it’s mass-produced, it’s cheap material, less details make it cheap, but also very ‘taste-oriented’ reason like; “It’s
cheap because it’s an ugly chair”. On the other hand people’s motivation also contained opposite thinking, because they would explain why the other one was more expensive; highly details, famous designer piece, wood is more expensive then plastic, etc. Those two ways of answering the actual question made me realize that most of these ‘factors’ act in duo’s. The reason for it to be cheap is not exactly the contrary of the reason why the other one would be expensive, because it’s not ‘Either this or Either that’. By trying to get together these sets of factors I can also indicate what factors create a higher value-perception in design. The basic list of these combo’s can be found on the right. Also quite a number of answer deal about wether an object, in this case a specific chair, is ugly or ‘bad design’. These motivations are always personal and I believe not even a questionnaire can conclude what is aesthetical or what is ugly. Therefor those answers are not included in the analysis.
Factors that give a product a cheap perception
Factors that don’t give a product a cheap perception
mass production
hand crafted
made with cheap material
expensive material
less color
colored, painted, coated
easy manufacturing
complicated manufacturing
less details
detailed
no finishing
finishing
less solid construction
good solid construction
fewer parts
multiple parts
less material used
more material used
self assembly product
finished (assembled) product
less, basic shapes
complicated shapes
familiar (seen before) object
unknown (never seen) object famous design(er) or company
copy / rip-off of original design
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Chapter 5
Conclusions Specific Cases When analyzing this huge amount of results it’s nice to see not only patterns appear, but also to find some specific cases, in which people tend indicated whether a chair is the rip-off of the other one. Of course this ‘test’ was set-up by me, when compiling the questionnaire’s chair-duo’s. This was for example the case with question 2.
2a
2b
Here, we know, Chair B is made by Jasper Morrisson for Magis, Chair A is Ikea’s interpretation of that design. It probably isn’t necessary to mention that Ikea’s version is cheapest, but if we look a how many percent (of the total amount of respondents on this question) believe that A or B is the rip-off, we see that the design (if your not familiar to it) doesn’t make it clear which one is the original design. Of all the people who refer to either one of the two is a rip-off (copy, imitation) 58% thinks A is the copy, and 42% believe A is the original, so B is the copy. So it plays quite a big role if you are familiar with one of the two designs, in order to make a judgement about copies, and about price in general. Which is the copy?
58%
Which is the cheapest?
42%
52,1%
47,9%
4a
4b
Another special case in this questionnaire was question 4. This is, as you could have seen in earlier pages, the exact same chair; Wood by Ake Axellson for Gärsnäs. It’s only sold as a self assembly set, but how many people did figure out that it’s the same chair? Over 26% actually saw from these 2 pictures that this is the same chair. I think this number is quite high, because just imagine how many people would know a car, a microwave or a computer by laying out it’s building blocks? Certainly Ikea plays a big role in this, because they almost ‘taught’ us, how to assemble a chair by ourselves, or any furniture basically, which is quite unique if you look at any daily product we use. It’s the same chair!
In question 6 it is interesting to notice that many people believe that the chair by Arne Jacobssen (A) is made from plastic, while it actually is a bend ply-wood chair. People tend to give that answer because it have a clear layer of pink coat/paint. Unfortunately this is one of the difficulties of having a questionnaire like this online (on the internet) because you can only show pictures of design, and not show people the actual chair, have them try it out, and then come with their individual conclusion. Another familiar remarks was found in question 8, where one of the chairs was the Result chair by Friso Kramer for Ahrend. It’s a very common chair for us Dutch, because you find it 8b a lot in offices, government buildings and school. Almost a quarter of the respondents made the link to that they think it’s a ‘school-chair’. 23,1%
26,1% 58%
58%
42% 73,9%
42% 76,9%
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Chapter 5
Conclusions Criticism In general I was quite satisfied with the amount of respondents I got for this questionnaire, which is merely based on making smart use of social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Nevertheless using these networks also resulted in respondents for a specific age group, between 22-32 years old. Of course I am in that same age-group, so are a lot of my friends. In a bigger or more scientific research the age-group should have a little bit better balanced age diversion among respondents. I also believe that a questionnaire like this is very useful in other product branches, not only for chairs or furniture. For the first time I got insights in how people actually perceive ‘design’ and what determines their value for a specific object. I believe outcomes like these can be of great value for the industry, but are hardly in reach of students or interested designers. Respondents reacted also positive on a questionnaire on the topic of design and affordability, they enjoyed it, some asked for the ‘correct’ answers, like if it were some quiz they participated in.
In a more scientific and analytic environment it would be good to professionalize the analysis of results. In this case I made the categorization according to the answers, but it would have been better, in terms of reliability of the results, to use a professional software-bundle like SPSS or something equivalent. Unfortunately I didn’t have the knowledge or sources to work on such a professional analytic level. Luckily the number of respondents enabled me to work with the details in my own, analog, way. As mentioned, Although most outcomes aren’t very surprising, I am happy with the results of this questionnaire. I now can use a more objective set of motivations for the perception of value in the design process, which should result in a better ‘placement’ of the products we develop.
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Acknowledgments This part of the research obviously was not possible without the input of all the respondents. Thanks go to them. Besides that I owe a thank you to David Menting who helped me out on building the actual questionnaire on the web. Thanks!
Bart Nijssen, May 2010
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During my research on the affordability and perception of prices of daily objects, I was searching for a valid source of information with peoples opinion on this specific topic. Why do people find / think that certain objects are cheaper than others? Of course I could answer that question for my own case, but to construct a more valid conclusion I had to have more objective data. For that reason I decided to gather the data by myself in an online questionnaire, which was online on my website for 7 days. An explanation of the process, the research question, the approach and of course my conclusions of this research will be presented in this book.
Design in Times of Crisis, Revisited. IM Master graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands
www.bartnijssen.com