IT-Based Tools to Support New Product Design: A Case Study of a Design Consultancy Firm - Information Technology and Product Development - page 67

Product designers will constantly refer back to the PDS to ensure that the sub-
sequent designs are appropriate and fulfill the brief. To produce the PDS the design
team will research the problem and analyze competing products (Brazier, 2001;
Hudson, 2005). Once the project is established, the details can be entered on to the
design consultancy's database. The database may be a relatively simple stand-alone
application containing basic information relating to the client or a more sophis-
ticated project management system (PMS) designed to track the progress of the
project, providing the project timeline, and critical path information. Microsoft's
MS-Project and Merlin are two commercially available software packages used by
designers for this purpose.
Before beginning work on a new project, a detailed contract is established
between Studio Levien and the client. Studio Levien charges on the basis of roy-
alties on each product sold and funds the design process based on an advance on
future royalties.
The next stage is that of conceptual design, in which the broad or schematic
concepts are proposed (Williams, 1997). With reference to the PDS, the design
team produces a range of outline concepts (Verbeke, 2001). The conceptual design
outlines some of the key product components (or modules) and their arrangement
(i.e., configuration). More detailed information is provided at a later stage (Brazier,
2001). For example, the concept design for a car might consist of a sketch showing a
car with four wheels and the engine mounted at the front of the car. The exact details
of the components, such as the diameter of the wheels or the size of the engine, are
determined at the detail design stage.
The degree of detail generated at the conceptual design stage will vary depend-
ing on the product being designed (Hudson, 2005). This stage of the design
process involves drawing up a number of different concepts which satisfy the
requirements of the product outlined in the PDS. They will then be evaluated to
decide on the most suitable for further development (Günther, Frankenberger, &
Auer, 1996).
The technique of “matrix evaluation” is one approach which can be used for
the evaluation process (Oren & Jin, 2002). Matrix evaluation lists the important
features required from a product. The list is developed using the PDS. The quality
of the other concepts are compared against the benchmark concept for the required
features, to help identify if the concept is better, worse than, or is the same as the
benchmark concept. The design with the most “better than” features is likely to be
the best concept to develop further.
The designers at Studio Levien capture their ideas by sketching them out on
paper. Annotation helps identify key points so that their ideas can be communi-
cated with the other members of the design team. There are a number of synectic
techniques available to the designer to aid the development of new concepts. One
of the standard techniques is brainstorming (Ivashkov, Souchkov, & Dzenisenka,
2000). This usually sparks ideas from other team members (Hymes & Olson, 1992).
By the end of a brainstorming session there will be a list of ideas that may have
the potential to be developed into a concept. Brainstorming works best when the
members of the team have a range of expertise to draw upon.