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The expanding variety of assistive technology devices is changing their image from medical instruments to consumer products. Their changing image coincides with consumer-directed efforts to shift the orientation of devices and service programs from a medical model to a model of consumerism. Under a consumerism model, manufacturers and suppliers in the marketplace compete to deliver to the customer the most useful product in the most efficient manner possible.
However, consumers are just one of several stakeholder groups in the assistive technology marketplace. Product developers, product manufacturers and vendors are some of the other stakeholders. Each stakeholder group has their own priorities, but they share the expectation that a product cannot be competitive in the marketplace unless it satisfies a consumer demand.
Capturing the wants and needs of the end user is a common practice in product marketing and product design. Consumer input is necessary but not sufficient on its own to direct the improvement of existing products or to identify opportunities for the introduction new products. To increase its value to all stakeholders, consumer input can be integrated with -- and balanced against -- the technical, market, production and financial constraints under which product designers, manufacturers and vendors operate.
The Consumer Ideal Product program achieves this integration at three levels:
- Reporting results of surveys where consumer's define the ideal product.
- Developing benchmarks and evaluating existing products against the ideal.
- Generating product checklists for consumers to use when comparing existing products.
The program is generating information on specific products useful to
manufacturers, professionals and consumers, and the above checklist is
an example of the information generated for consumers to use when purchasing
a device; in this case a battery charger.
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