AMSTERDAM-Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores are in working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, according to a study reported by Reuters.
Though product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, companies frequently dismiss them as “nuisance calls,” Elke den Ouden found in her thesis at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
The average U.S. consumer will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device to work before giving up, the study found.
As part of the study, Den Ouden gave new products to a group of managers from consumer electronics company Philips. After trying to use the products over a weekend, the managers came back frustrated because they could not get the devices to work properly. According to Den Ouden, the first phase of the design process-product definition-caused most of the flaws.
