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
- preliminary design - early versions of the design are generated
- evaluation and improvement - features are further developed before market testing
- concept screening - ideas checked for success or rejection
- 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.
- 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?)