OF THE USER, BY THE USER, FOR THE USER: ENGAGING USERS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS PRODUCT EVOLUTION

Collectively users constitute a source of massive amounts of product innovation (Vonn Hippel, Ogawa and de Jong, 2012). When users are viewed merely as recipients of innovation, the firm does not have access to user knowledge and experience developed through product use (Sawhney, Verona and Prandelli, 2005). Additionally, it has been suggested that the product evolution should be innovative in the users’ frame of mind not the developers’ (Fellows and Hooks, 1998). New product features that do not resonate with the users create wasted development effort, delay in time-to-market, increased complexity and operational costs of the product. Keeping this context in view, this empirical study assesses existing promising methods for selecting new product features through involvement of users. The results of this study show that the Kano survey method demonstrated potential in not only identifying those product features that add value to the user but also those which do not