The life of a product, from idea to physical prototype, undergoes uncountable changes and exchanges many different hands. But after all of this, is the final product perfect?
To answer: probably not. From the first time a product idea is presented, it will go through many, many, many iterations in each department (research, design, development etc) until it is passes onto the next department. Even then, once the product gets to the end of the line and is ready for stores, there will be improvements or changes that need to be made yet this will not be discovered until users are able to interact with it.
This is where signal detection theory comes in. Signal detection is the way researchers/developers understand the decision making process in the presence of uncertainty or noise and the ability we have to distinguish between a signal and noise.
Thanks to this graph, each possible outcome that a user could make, can be represented and calculated to determine if the individuals action was successful or not. Because humans are so unpredictable, SDT offers some insight on our ability to recognize a signal and if there is noise disrupting that which could impact the prevalence of user error.
How well a user perceives and understands signals given in an onboarding process or necessary actions needed will impact the success in making a product function correctly or to its greatest potential. Altering a system to create more clear signals or diminish noise, will in turn create more success and a happier user.
So, can you think of any product that is arguably perfect? What about one with the least noise?
Olivia,
I like the way you defined signal detection theory. I cannot think of any product that is "perfect", but I think that the products that seem perfect are the ones that have learned how to filter their noise, rather than those that don't have any.
~Audrey