By Amanda Djäknegren and Hanna Murgård
An important aspect of Volvo Trucks’ work with Usability is to understand the user’s satisfaction when using a product. As a part of my work at Driver Interaction at Volvo Trucks in collaboration with Hanna Murgård, we investigated a new method for measuring and understanding the user’s satisfaction. The method was evaluated through creating physical prototypes of two next-generation concept dashboards and testing them with users.
Process
In preparation of creating a new method for measuring satisfaction, a literature study was conducted. The new method was tested multiple times and adjusted to be intuitive and easy to use for both participants and supervisors of the study, including analysis of the study after the fact.
The concept that the new method was tested on was a continuation of a bachelor thesis previously conducted. This concept was adjusted slightly in order to better reflect the current interface and design language of their current trucks, but was otherwise kept intact. An additional concept was created to compare with. This helped to understand the users’ preference in certain design features.
Concept 1 
Concept 2
The concept was built using a combination of foam board and 3D-printed parts, and attached, along with a screen, to a truck dashboard. This combination of physical, functional buttons and a digital touch display allowed for the users to interact with the concept in a way very similar to how they would interact with the final product. A number of features of the concepts were evaluated, some good, some intentionally difficult, which helped in understanding the effectiveness of the satisfaction method. The new method was also compared to an existent method to validate the result.
In the end, recommendations for how to continue working with both the concept and the new method was made.
