Product & Service Design (Reading 14)

The importance of new product development

Design as a process / steps

Design thinking

The design of products & services

Quality function deployment

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) (referred to as the house of quality) - "...useful tool that helps translate customer needs in a technical design specification, in a series of steps."

New product categories:

New generation products
(a company produces a new product that still meets the needs of the customer just in a new technology (i.e. cassette tape to downloaded file)

Breakthrough products
(a product that is so unique that it creates its own market & product category)

Incremental enhancements of existing products
(existing products that go through minor modifications to enhance an aspect but still maintain the customer needs)

Producing new products and services in an organisation helps the organisation stay ahead of its competitors and maintain a profit.

Reasons for new product failures:

The product is launched too soon

The product does not have sufficient appeal to the market

The company cannot support the growth

The customer does not understand the product

There is no market for the product despite its novel features

  1. preliminary design - early versions of the design are generated
  1. evaluation and improvement - features are further developed before market testing
  1. concept screening - ideas checked for success or rejection
  1. prototype and final design - examples produced & tested by designers before customers. The prototype stage can find problems that may have been missed earlier in the process.
  1. concept generation - new ideas are generated

UK Design Council design process phases

Phase 2: Define (project scope of work defined and signed off by senior management)

Phase 3: Develop (development and testing of the prototype happens in this phase)

Phase 1: Discover (objective: develop a number of options to present to the design team)

Phase 4: Deliver (final checks are put in place & final problems ironed out)

No idea is too wild - come up with ideas quickly and avoid restraint

Collaborate - with a multi-disciplinary team. Use people to look at problems from different perspectives

Understand the user - gain an insight into the customer's needs and values

Test your ideas - produce low-cost prototypes to test how they meet customers needs

Reframe ideas - look at the problem from a different angle

See the bigger picture - look at the design and business strategies as a whole to look at the value of what you are doing

Product design aspects:

Maintainability - the product must be easy to maintain

Durability - how long a product will last before it needs replacing

Reliability - product reliability is one of the most essential aspects of products characteristics

Product-ability - designers have to think about how the components of a product fit together & how the product will go to market

Aesthetics - styling of the product is key once the functionality has been achieved

Service concept:

The service outcome - designers have a clear understanding of the outcome the customer is seeking & how this is measured

The service operation - any design must identify all aspects of how the service is delivered

The service experience - think about the customer's direct experience of the service process

The value of the service - the customer will compare the perceived service against the costs

The organising idea - nature of the service being bought (important elements & service experience)

Steps to deliver new product/service characteristics:

Identify the exact links between attributes & characteristics (what vs how)

Identify conflicts or trade-offs between characteristics that require further development effort or compromise

Identify the characteristics that would be needed to meet the customer needs & how needs are met (How?)

Establish why you want a certain characteristic to be deployed

Identify what attributes or features the customer wants

Decide which characteristic to deploy & the level of the characteristic (How much?)