An approach of product usability evaluation based on Web mining in feature fatigue analysis

• An approach of product usability analysis based on Web mining is proposed.
• The Apriori algorithm is used for mining association rules related to usability.
• The massive online customer reviews on products are used as data source.
• A feature fatigue degree FFD is defined for feature fatigue evaluation.

Customers prefer to purchase products with more features, but after using the products, they may become dissatisfied with the usability problems of the products. This phenomenon is called “feature fatigue”. Thus it is imperative to analyze product usability in product definition stage. However, most traditional methods of usability evaluation are generally carried out using prototypes which are not available until in the later stage of product development. This paper proposes an approach based on Web mining to analyze product usability. This approach uses the massive online customer reviews on analogous products and features as data source, which are easy to get from Web and can reflect the most updated customer opinions on product usability. Association rule mining techniques are adopted to extract customer opinions on the usability of product features. The Apriori algorithm is used for mining association rules, based on which a usability evaluation method is then presented. A case example is given to validate the proposed approach.