By Karin Bendixen

An Italian lock system company has supplemented marketing research with user surveys. Despite production costs up by 20 percent, the verdict is that "It is a good investment".

This key has no "up" or "down" and it has a soft and firm grip between the thumb and forefinger and fits most fingers. Apart from being very secure, the lock system is also easy to turn.

At the end of the day, most of us have hold a key in our hand. Truly a product for all, but does the key have a Design for All?

"Precisely because a key is a necessity, we are likely to accept the difficulties that we have with holding and turning it correctly, when we open and lock our door. And who has never struggled to get a key on a keyring?" Asks Lina Bonapace, designer, ergonomist and Managing Director of ErgoSolu-tions, the consultants in design and ergonomics who did the user surveys and designed the new key system for ISEO Serrature, an Italian lock system company with more than 30 years experience in the security field.

Together with Lina Bonapace, "Crisp & Clear" visited ISEO Serrature, in the village of Pisogne, near Brescia, approximately an hour’s drive from Milan, and spoke with Pascal Leclercq, the company’s Marketing Director, to hear what the company and the consultancy had to say about the development of a key for a wide range of users.

Changed focus

A survey of poor quality, user-unfriendly keys and lock systems conducted in other European countries made ISEO Serrature take a closer look at their own lock systems.

"The survey showed that people had a lot of problems with keys and lock systems. And these problems showed in relation to the quality of the keys and the key handle," says Pascal Leclercq.

"Until now, we had always based the production of our lock systems exclusively on market research conducted on the sales side and concentrated on developing a high security system. We knew nothing about users, but have now learned that it is es-sential to listen to their comments and experiences. That is why we have shifted our focus toward the user and the functionalism of our products towards ease of use."

A good investment

Designer Stéphane Fournier and designer ergonomist Lina Bonapace, ErgoSolutions

Although working on a user-friendly lock system has cost the company 20 percent more in production costs, it has no doubts that, in the long run, it is a good investment. And the consumer will not have to pay for the extra costs, says Pascal Leclercq.

ISEO Serrature contacted Stéphane Fournier, Design Manager at Ergo-Solutions, a Milan-based consultancy specialising in ergonomics and design, including user involvement and user need surveys.

"You need to know who your end-users are and you need to start invol-ving them in the design process," Lina Bonapace puts her opinion in a nutshell, continuing: "We started by discovering users’ experiences with door keys, then followed with their needs and wishes in relation to a new type of key. In the first phase, we ran user trials with various existing products in order to single out the product’s physical properties that characterise function, good usability and pleasure in use, after which mock-ups of the design proposals were evaluated in order to reach the best solution.

Pleasure in use is comparatively new in terms of systematic user research, but it is an important parameter for the time that we live in; something we cannot ignore."

Demanding consumers

On typical trait of the Italian is the predominance of SMEs. This means that companies cannot afford in-house user departments to discover user needs. Instead, many companies have a marketing department which overlaps into the sales division and relies on external market research consultants. At the moment, these are the most important source of information for production.

"But, in future, companies cannot base their entire production on marketing research alone. The trend is towards an increasing focus on users, also because the users make bigger demands, expect more quality and ease of use and are becoming increasingly critical in the choice of the products they buy and use," says Lina Bonapace.

She also emphasises the significance of the increase in numbers of elderly people for the future target groups addressed by companies. ErgoSolutions always involves elderly users, as well people with special needs, although it does not always include people with disabilities in its user surveys.

"But," says Lina Bonapace: "we are beginning to include them more in our user trials, in order to ensure that products approach Design For All."

Preparatory sketches for the key design. As with all design work, long working hours go into hand or computer sketches before all requirements and wishes are fulfilled.

They need to be convinced

Lina Bonapace argues in favour of providing convincing statistics that demonstrate both the financial and the ergonomic benefits: "There is a need to convince companies of the overall benefits accruing from Designing For All. Adequate ways of marketing the user-centred design approach must be implemented and this calls for cost-benefit surveys." Seminars and training could also be used to increase awareness among manufacturers and experts, as they are now being bombarded with new concepts like Design for All, usability, user-centred design etc. and the knowledge that sticks is often very superficial. What they do not know is that there are systematic and scientific approaches to these concepts that also respect the time constraints characteristic of the design process.

Inter-disciplinary field

"Although the ergonomic approach is the starting point for many designers, the word is sometimes perceived rather negatively," says Lina Bonapace "because people have only static body dimensions and Le Modulor’s proportional system in mind. (Le Corbusier’s system for determining detailed goals for designing the environment. Ed.). This is a very limited view of what ergonomics offer as a support to the design process and as an active member of the design team.

"But for me, Design for All is so broad a field that it can only be solved in co-operation with other professional groups."

That it is an inter-disciplinary approach also transpires from her consultancy’s composition, whose members are a psychologist, a technician, a designer and a designer ergonomist.

In the big production hall, the machines ceaselessly transform bright, long brass rods with different profiles into locks, keys and other small com-ponents that shoot out like so many cartridges. 30,000 keys and locks are made each day, with 17,000 diffe-rent combinations of codes. 40 % the company’s production is sold in Italy and the rest abroad.

We close the door to the production hall, and leave for Milan – but first we take a look at our car key… Does it have a design for all?

Published Crisp & Clear No. 1, April 2000