Social Interactions in Post-design Phases in Product Development and Consumption: Computational Social Science Modeling - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 138

11.1 Introduction

In the eyes of a producer or designer, consumers often react to a new product
introduction in surprising and unexpected ways. These unexpected reactions in the
post-design phase are both a source of risk—products may fail in the marketplace—
and a source of innovation as new uses or new utility are discovered, which in turn
create opportunities for new directions in product design. Both producers and
consumers form their expectations during the pre-design and design phases, includ-
ing their experience with previous designs. But their behaviors and interactions in
the post-design phase are not simply a matter of having those expectations met or
not. In other words, design does not sit only between product requirements and
product generation in the pre-design and design phases. Design also spans the post-
design phase where there is often a complex interplay between cognition, value
systems, and social interactions that reshape the design landscape and, cause pro-
ducers to reevaluate their plans and strategies for future designs. This can be
illustrated as follows.
Over the course of several product design generations, a producer will probably
develop design competency in some areas (e.g. high volume production, narrow
tolerances, ergonomic design) and not in others (e.g. reliability in extreme envi-
ronments, high performance, small runs of custom configurations). Reinforced by
success in the market, this producer will tend to value future designs that utilize the
producer's competencies and exclude the design characteristics where the producer
has little or no competency. Essentially, these design preferences are the producer's
value system, which is also reflected in the producer's preferred stream of new
product designs. We can view a stream of new product designs as a trajectory
within the space of possible designs or within the space of possible performance/
cost ratios. From their viewpoint, the Producer prefers new product designs that are
similar to those where the Producer has the most experience and expertise, where it
has relatively good profitability, and also where the Producer expects Consumer
demand to be high or at least adequate. If consumers behave as the producer expects
based on pre-design and design work, then the producer's strategic choice becomes
one of choosing the optimal design trajectory and then executing it effectively.
But if consumers do not always react as expected or if they engage creatively
with new and existing products in the post-design phase, then producers must
reevaluate their strategic choices. This might mean abandoning existing competen-
cies and preferred design strategies in favor of new and untried paths. (This is a
form of Schumpeter's “creative destruction” Schumpeter 1942 .) It might also mean
that the producer might benefit from serendipitous events—e.g. product character-
istics that were previously not valued by consumers suddenly come into favor,
allowing a marginal producer to rise to market leadership. Producers that success-
fully observe and learn from consumers in the post-design phase can then adapt
their strategies and plans in the subsequent pre-design and design phases, including
the possibility of making fundamental changes in strategy or architecture.