Product and Service Design
Key Points
The importance of new product development
Design as a process
Design thinking
The design of products and services
Quality function deployment
Almost all products/services has a limited life cycle
They can become outdated and obsolete as competitor develop new ideas and technologies are replaced
The effort behind the scenes of what makes a product always work is not considered
Complex products/products that will be used for a log time need extensive prototyping, testing and revision
The process for creating a new design is multi disciplinary and involves people from all functions
Customer needs are translated into technical specifications for products and their components
Tools to help create design specifications
Quality function deployment (QFD)
Sometimes referred to as the house of quality
A tool that helps translate customer needs into a technical design specification
An essential activity in all organisations
Without development, product would become obsolete which increases the likelihood of customers going to competitors which offer better performance at lower costs
Brand loyalty may slow the decline of the customer base but the brand itself can be damaged by allowing a product to remain unchanged
Many companies thrive on their introduction of new products with unique features or innovative services
This maintains the gap between themselves and competitors
Helps them to avoid competition based on price
NPD can be categorised in three ways
Incremental enhancement of existing products
New generation products
Breakthrough products
Existing products that are given minor modifications to enhance an aspect of their performance
EG - redesign to reduce wastage or unit cost
The product concept (the way it meets customer needs) does NOT change
Can be disruptive to innovation
Developing a completely new product/redesign an existing product based on new technologies
The basic need for the customer does not change however the technology applied to meet that need has changed significantly
Seen a lot in the car industry
Products that are so unique they create their own market and product category
New product failure rates
Despite all the hard work, very few products actually succeed in the market
40% of newly introduced products will not achieve their sales or profitability objectives
Schneider and Hall (2011) 5 main reasons for the failure of new product launches
The company cannot support the growth
The product does not have sufficient appeal to the market
The product is launched too soon
The customer does not understand the product
There is no market for the product despite its novel features
If the product is successful the company will have to be able to scale up production quickly
Some products are launched before the functionality actually meets the market requirements
Take considerable preparation and can place strain on cash flow
Products must meet the claims made in launch publicity information.
Some products will be modified slightly to target a different market but the customer does not see the product’s advantages over
existing ones
Customers will not switch to the new product as anticipated
Non-adoption can occur as a result of poor market testing and failure to stop a product during the development stage that has received negative feedback
Some new products require customer education before they are adopted
Sometimes the customer does not see how the product can be used
EG - technological changes to devises
Some customers are holding back innovation until the customer is ready
Highly innovative products that simply do not sell in any
quantity despite the levels of innovation and uniqueness they possess
Slack et al. (2011) break the design process into 5 broad steps
1. Concept generation
2. Concept screening
3. Preliminary design
4. Evaluation and improvement
5. Prototyping and final design
Where new ideas for products and services are first generated
Where ideas are checked for their likelihood of success and some ideas rejected
Where early versions of the design are generated
Where the product or service features are further developed before testing in the market
Where the first examples are produced and tested, initially by the designers, before being put in front of customers
Can uncover problems with the design that have otherwise been overlooked during the development stage.
The Design Council Double Diamond design process
See diagram in Book 1 p127
Phase 1: Discover
Phase 2: Define
Phase 3: Develop
Phase 4: Deliver
'One of divergent thought'
The people involved look at a wide range of ideas and sources of information to generate very different sets of ideas about new products and service that could be produced
Sources can be from formal marketing research activities, research among users of existing products or experts in design teams
The objective here is to develop a number of different options to present to the design team
'A convergent process where the ideas generate in Phase 1 are reviewed to filter out those ideas that stand least chance of successful development'
By the end everyone in the team needs to agree on the best options to pursue
Ideas can be rejected because they don't tackle the right problem or there are better alternative solutions
Here there is a lot of planning of the design activities as a project, clear scoping of work, planning of work content and sign off by senior management
'Another divergent process where features and options are tested, usually through some form of prototyping'
Likely to involve the use of computers to help produce technical design details and sometimes even to produce virtual prototypes before the products are psychically made
The testing of prototypes forms a big part of the development phase.
Where ideas have been refined during the prototyping activities and the final checks are put in place
Usually a few technical problems to address, where something has not worked in the way expected
Ensure that products meet all standards and regulations
A methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation
activities with a human-centered design ethos
Innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported
Brown has developed a list of recommendations to help make the design process more effective
Involve designers at the earliest stage in the process possible to explore more ideas
Entirety human-centric looking at how needs and preferences of users influence the product or service design
Direct observation of users or potential users to see how they interact with the product and how the environment influences this.
Extreme users who might use a product in a very different way to that expected
Gives an insights into how additional characteristics or features may need to be brought into the design to cope with expected applications
Six principles commonly quoted for design thinking
Re frame ideas
Understand the user
No idea is too wild
Collaborate
Test your ideas
See the bigger picture
Take a step back to see what assumptions you are making and whether you can look at the problem from a different angle.
Put a lot of effort into understanding the user at a much deeper level. Gain an insight into their needs and values.
Come up with ideas quickly and avoid restraints. Generate a range of human-centric solutions.
Learn to work with a multi disciplinary team in a collaborative manner. Use people to solve problems from different perspectives
Create low-cost prototypes quickly and obtain feedback immediately on how this meets users’ needs.
Look at the business and design strategies holistically so that you look at the value of what you are doing in the right context
Product design
Service design: the service concept
For product design the focus is very definitely on the functionality of the product and the tangible aspects of how this meets customers’ needs
Services can be far less tangible and customer perceptions can be influenced by a range of factors associated with their experience of the service
The amount of effort put into the design are largely ignored.
Service design is much more about the design of the process of what the customer experiences as much as the tangible aspects of how needs are met
Produce-ability
Reliability
Aesthetics
Maintainability
Durability
Customers may choose a product that has lower functionality in
preference for improved appearance
Sometimes the purpose of a product will still work very well
The styling of a product is a key consideration after functionality
A product is of little use if it performs well for a short period of time but then fails
In some sectors (eg aerospace) product reliability is one of the most essential aspects of the products characteristics
A product is of less use if it is difficult to maintain
Designers will often have to address how long a product is expected to last for before it is replaced.
This might be less of an issue in fast paced markets with great technological change
In some markets, designers have to carefully balance issues such as cost and product longevity
Producing a product that inst too expensive or impossible to make
Designers will have to think about how components will fit togethers and how the product will look through the production process
Will need to consider how the product reaches the customer in the distribution system
Johnston and Clark (2005) 5 elements of the service concept
The organising idea
The service experience
The service outcome
The service operation
The value of the service
The nature of the service being bought
Identifies the purpose of the service provided
What the service must include in terms of both tangible facilities and intangible experiences
Need to think about the customer’s direct experience of the service process
Includes
The steps the customer goes through to experience the service
How the customer interacts with the service
How staff providing the service deal with the customer
'Moments of truth' - where each service interaction between
provider and customer acts as a point where value can be created
Designers must have a clear understanding of the outcome the customer is seeking and how this is measured
Any design must identify all aspects of how the service is delivered
The physical facilities are a core part of the service
operation
Systems must be well designed to improve efficiency
The customer will compare the perceived benefits of the service against its costs
You need to have a clear understanding of which aspects of the service experience the customer values most
A tool that is used to work out design priorities and to define technical specifications
QFD aka 'House of Quality'
Process includes the development of a detailed chart containing various pieces of analysis, consisting of a series of boxes capped by a triangular ‘roof’ hence 'House of Quality'
The characteristics can be divided into 6 steps
- Identify what attributes or features the customer wants from the product or service.
- Identify the product characteristics that would be necessary to meet the customers’ needs (and how needs are met).
- Identify the exact links between attributes and characteristics (what vs how).
- Identify conflicts or trade-offs between characteristics that require further developmental effort or compromise.
- Compare the proposed features with the features in competing products and decide on the relative importance of the product characteristics. Establish why you want a certain characteristic to be deployed
- Decide which characteristics to deploy and the level of that characteristic (How much?)
Data are analysed at each of these stages to construct a House of Quality diagram, or QFD matrix, which has a basic shape as shown in Book 1 p 133
Information comes from market research, observation of customers and input from employees.
Outcome is a detailed list of customer needs and preferences relating to the design of the new product
Each product or service may have a number of different elements or components that are needed to meet all of the requirements
A relationship matrix is created, showing how the customer requirements are related to the product characteristics - See Book 1 p 134
Shows whether the technical attributes meet the customer requirements
One technical feature or component may influence more than one performance characteristic
Relationships are indicated using three different symbols
indicating strong, medium or weak interaction
It is important to identify trade offs as soon as you can because these are actions you can take at the design stage to address some of these
The triangular relationship matrix that forms the roof of the diagram is where these conflicts are recorded. Symbols are used to record positive and negative relationships - See Book 1 p135
In order to establish how a product might compete in the market, it is useful to compare the performance of rival products.
Importance ratings should first be established for each customer attribute, so that there can be some objectivity within the comparison
Relative levels of importance should be determined from the initial market research data
Decide which is the characteristics should be in the final design and which product characteristics you deploy in the final specification
Sometimes a products perceived quality is influence more by image or company reputation, and a lower technical specification is appropriate
Uses in-house testing to establish the actual links between a
product’s technical characteristics and consumer appeal
Once completed the the QFD matrix will look something like Figure 5 - Book 1 p 136
Cascading the QFD matrix to other levels
The matrix can be used at further levels of analysis
It can be used to define the characteristics of individual components.
This can then develop quality control/production plans that detail how quality is measured as the product is mad
See Book 1 p 137
Can be seen as a time consuming method of structuring ideas of product or service design
However, it can be used to help reduce the amount of rework of design, reducing costs and speeding the design lead time
Walley (2017) argues that highly structured ways of managing the design process do have some disadvantages
Limits creativity
Allows for the the possible early rejection of new ideas that do not fit within the existing mindset of the design team