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namely the Needs, and a more articulated representation of Requirements, a
different type of variable already appearing in some of Gero's publications.
The aim of the proposed model is to support a more careful and detailed
investigation of the processes that occur in the earliest stages of design. Therefore,
it might be considered globally prescriptive, in terms of a general recommendation
to include in any design activity a clear identification of the Needs to be addressed
and then a careful definition of the Requirements specification. These should occur
before proceeding with the formulation of the Function, Behaviour and Structure
design variables. Additionally, the proposed model has mostly a descriptive nature,
as a general framework to describe actual product definition processes and also to
map and analyse the outcomes of the new user-oriented design practices. An
illustrative example about the design of a kettle clarifies the meaning of the
added variables and processes and the degree of detail that the model allows to
represent.
The model also allows mapping the reciprocal influences that the different
stakeholders might have on each other. Beyond the explicit representation of vari-
ables describing Needs and Requirements, the extended model suggests the iden-
tification of several external worlds, each representing the context of a different
stakeholder. These are schematically classified into four main categories, namely
Buyer, User, Beneficiary and Outsider. By distinguishing the need and requirement
variables related to these external worlds and the processes they are involved in, it is
possible to study a design activity with a detailed representation of the critical
factors of the product-planning phase. Specifically, the model is suitable to repre-
sent tasks such as the interpretation of stakeholders' needs, their translation into
formal requirements, the proposition of trade-offs between conflicting requests and
all the decisions occurring in the formulation stage of design.
In general, the proposed model is expected to be fruitfully applicable with
several purposes, such as the analysis of the activity of an innovation team, the
verification of the impact of a training on product planning, and the quality of a
design method. From this perspective, the main limitation seems to be the time
needed to carefully classify a design protocol, given the increased number of
variable types, worlds and actors to be considered.
Finally, according to the authors' knowledge, no other models currently exist to
conduct detailed investigations on the earliest phases of product development.
Given the importance of the latters, especially within innovation activities, the
model presented in this paper can be considered worthy of further investigation and
improvement.
References
Alexander C (1964) Notes on the synthesis of form. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Appio FP, Achiche S, McAloone T, Di Minin A (2011) Understanding managers decision making
process for tools selection in the core front end of innovation. In: Proceedings of the
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