Desenvolvimento de produto – elaboração e avaliação mecânica e sensorial de usabilidade de concepções para a tampa do compartimento extra frio de um refrigerador

Abstract

A domestic refrigerator is indispensable for the well been of humanity, keeping the food fresh for a longer time than in the environment, allowing the user to stock everyday supplies. During a product development, many tests need to be done in order to fulfill requirements and standards, internal (institutional) or governmental. In a company that cares about the costumer, only that is not enough, a quality product that conveys the feeling of robustness and concern with the user experience is essential and extra studies over the project scope are fundamental. In the case of refrigerators, dimensional and vector quantities studies and stack ups are important to solve problems that may occur for parts that are assembled, sliding and pivoting, especially when there is a user interaction with the part or feature. In some cases, the user may interact with the part in a way that was not designed, which may cause some inconvenience, studies on this unexpected interaction must be done. The general objective of this work is to evaluate and compare different proposals for the Cold Room Compartment of a refrigerator considering the user interaction. The pullout test shows that the different proposals present satisfactory results, and that when evaluated in sets of responses from the sensory usability test, it is clear that users, for the most part, do not perceive the difference between the proposals in a sensory way. Keywords: pullout force, usability.