A user centered design process comprises of several
techniques to understand user needs, user experience and to
test design concepts with real users. Many of these techniques
require qualitative studies with small groups of users based on
set guidelines and are time and resource intensive.
In this paper we propose a new technique: “User Review
Analysis”that makes use of big data to uncover user needs.
The technique consists of collecting and analyzing online user
reviews on shopping sites such as Amazon.
The basic idea is that because of the fast and cyclic nature of
consumer products development, the reviews of Today’s
products inform the next product generation. The data is based
on real experience with similar products; the aggregated
insights provide us with design factors of the product that
users deem important and attractive.
We report of a first study and compare the results with known
techniques. The results indicate that the analysis of user
reviews is a currently untapped and readily available resource
to inform a design process.