PLT (Persona Logical Thinking): A Method to Generate User Requirements for Multidisciplinary Design Teams

In this paper, we present a new original method to generate user requirements, Persona Logical Thinking (PLT). Because this method combines several ways of reasoning (empathetic thinking and logical thinking), we hypothesized that it would be particularly efficient for multidisciplinary design teams. To test this assumption, we compared PLT to an empathetic method and to a logical method for generating user requirements for tablets in the education field. We organized working sessions of 60 minutes with 4 designers (from student population of engineers, industrial designers and ergonomists). Nine working sessions were conducted with a total of 36 participants (21 males and 15 females aged 25 years old on average). To evaluate the effectiveness of the three methods, we collected two variables: quantity and originality of user requirements, classified into three categories (User's Needs, Product Functions and Technical Solutions). Our results show that teams were more productive with PLT for the generation of product functions (examples: thinness, being powerful, long life battery…), including original functions (be recyclable, be resistant to chemical substances...). These preliminary results being promising for improving the innovation process, we discuss the future steps that would be necessary to validate our method.