Social Interactions in Post-design Phases in Product Development and Consumption: Computational Social Science Modeling - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 150

Therefore, our experimental approach involves comparing results across three
experimental settings with identical initial conditions for the Product Design Set:
1. A single Producer acting in isolation from Consumers, with a deterministic
consumption rule.
2. Consumers acting in isolation from Producers, with a deterministic Product
replacement rule.
3. A single Producer interacting with a population of Consumers, with endogenous
consumption and production/innovation processes.
The first setting allows us to measure the outcomes of Producer's decision
process considering only the needs and values of the Producer. We expect to see
design trajectories that are chosen based on local optimization and accumulated
'learning by doing', given the initial 'active' Product set and the topology of
the Product Design Set. We can consider these realized design trajectories to be
'preferred' by Producers in the absence of other influences. Furthermore, we
measure the Producer's value system by the weights they assign to the three
alternative utility measures.
The second setting allows us to measure the outcomes of Consumers' decision
processes considering their needs and values alone. We expect to see Consumer
values—i.e. their 'ideal product' vector and their utility weights—adapt continu-
ously as new products are introduced. However, Consumer adaptation will stop
when they find Products that are repeatedly and sufficiently satisfying, and thus
'make up their mind' by resisting any further changes to their values. This should
lead to two types of results. First, the population of Consumers will become
segmented as sub-groups form with similar values that are resistant to change.
This will be visible as clusters in Value Space and Utility Space. Second, there will
be considerable path dependence in trajectories in Value Space and Utility Space
depending on the initial 'active' Product set and also the sequence of product
introductions. This will mean that if Products are introduced in the 'wrong'
sequence, Consumers may not find them attractive enough to consume, even though
they would do so in other, more favorable circumstances (Saunders and Gero 2004 ) .
The third setting allows us to measure the value system changes that result from
the mutual influence of Consumers and Producers. If design trajectory outcomes in
this third setting resemble those of the first setting, then we can say that the
Producer's values have not been significantly affected by the Consumer's behaviors
and their changes in values. Likewise, if the trajectories and patterns of Consumer
values in Value Space and Utility Space resemble those from the second setting,
then we can say that Consumer values have not been significantly affected by
Producer decisions and changes in their values.
However, we expect to see significant differences in the third setting compared
to both the first and the second, which would provide evidence that both the
Producer's and Consumers' values have a strong mutual influence on each other
that is not predicted by their behavior in isolation. Furthermore, this sets the stage
for possible emergent phenomena and 'collective intelligence' that arise from this
mutual influence.