scholarly journals Product Design Choices

Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Jeannet ◽  
Thierry Volery ◽  
Heiko Bergmann ◽  
Cornelia Amstutz

AbstractHow SMEs dealt with the trade-offs between functionality, design, and ergonomics to compensate for a high-cost production basis and offering customers a competitive in-use price is key to their overall competitiveness. Design for durability is an important practice as it decreases in-use costs over time and offsets higher acquisition costs. For marketing success, design flair can be used to enhance the product appearance and looks. A very important element is the ergonomics and ease of use of a product as this can both reduce in-use costs and make the higher price tag the most efficient solution after all. The chapter ends with a discussion of the more recent concept of design thinking and how some of the Swiss SMEs have applied this idea well before the term became fashionable.


Author(s):  
James G. March

Humans use reasons to shape and justify choices. In the process, trade-offs seem essential and often inevitable. But trade-offs involve comparisons, which are problematic both across values and especially over time. Reducing disparate values to a common metric (especially if that metric is money) is often problematic and unsatisfactory. Critically, it is not that values just shape choices, but that choices themselves shape values. This endogeneity of values makes an unconditional normative endorsement of modern decision-theoretic rationality unwise. This is a hard problem and there is no escaping the definition of good values, that is, those that make humans better. This removes the wall between economics and philosophy. If we are to adopt and enact this perspective, then greater discourse and debate on what matters and not just what counts will be useful and even indispensable.



2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrien Querbes ◽  
Koen Frenken

We propose a generalized NK-model of late-mover advantage where late-mover firms leapfrog first-mover firms as user needs evolve over time. First movers face severe trade-offs between the provision of functionalities in which their products already excel and the additional functionalities requested by users later on. Late movers, by contrast, start searching when more functionalities are already known and typically come up with superior product designs. We also show that late-mover advantage is more probable for more complex technologies. Managerial implications follow.



Author(s):  
Jesse D. Peplinski ◽  
Janet K. Allen ◽  
Farrokh Mistree

Abstract How can the manufacturability of different product design alternatives be evaluated efficiently during the early stages of concept exploration? The benefits of such integrated product and manufacturing process design are widely recognized and include faster time to market, reduced development costs and production costs, and increased product quality. To reap these benefits fully, however, one must examine product/process trade-offs and cost/schedule/performance trade-offs in the early stages of design. Evaluating production cost and lead time requires detailed simulation or other analysis packages which 1) would be computationally expensive to run for every alternative, and 2) require detailed information that may or may not be available in these early design stages. Our approach is to generate response surfaces that serve as approximations to the analyses packages and use these approximations to identify robust regions of the design space for further exploration. In this paper we present a method for robust product and process exploration and illustrate this method using a simplified example of a machining center processing a single component. We close by discussing the implications of this work for manufacturing outsourcing, designing robust supplier chains, and ultimately designing the manufacturing enterprise itself.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuva Chowdhury

Bringing the designer’s concept to the non-design expert’s communicative level requires a significant understanding of the communication media. Primarily the design communication depends on the type of the tools used. Virtual tools with their pre-set operability limit the designer’s ways of interaction with the artefacts. This article proposes a framework for designers to interact with non-design experts through an enhanced communicative media. The design framework indicates steps of design thinking to develop the interface by understanding both the virtual artefacts’ perceptual affordance to the users and the design task. The paper discusses about projects tested in three different scenarios, urban design, architecture, and product design. It concludes with the arguments on designers’ role as authors of the system design.



2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Vandekerckhove ◽  
Yves Vandekerckhove ◽  
Rene Tavernier ◽  
Kelly De Jaegher ◽  
Marleen de Mul

UNSTRUCTURED During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, cardiologists have attempted to minimize risks to their patients by using telehealth to provide continuing care. Rapid implementation of video consultations in outpatient clinics for patients with heart disease can be challenging. We employed a design thinking tool called a customer journey to explore challenges and opportunities when using video communication software in the cardiology department of a regional hospital. Interviews were conducted with 5 patients with implanted devices, a nurse, an information technology manager and two cardiologists. Three lessons were identified based on these challenges and opportunities. Attention should be given to the ease of use of the technology, the meeting features, and the establishment of the connection between the cardiologist and the patient. Further, facilitating the role of an assistant (or virtual assistant) with the video consultation software who can manage the telehealth process may improve the success of video consultations. Employing design thinking to implement video consultations in cardiology and to further implement telehealth is crucial to build a resilient health care system that can address urgent needs beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.



Author(s):  
Judith L. Capper

Abstract The environment impact of livestock production is one of the most significant issues within agriculture. Global concerns over climate change, resource use, pollution and other environment indicators means that producers must implement practices and systems to reduce environmental impacts, yet this may only be achieved through assessments that allow impacts to be quantified, benchmarked and improved over time. Although environmental indicators are widely accepted, the metrics by which these are assessed continue to evolve over time as assessment objectives gain clarity and focus, and as the science relating to controversial topics (e.g. global warming or carbon sequestration) becomes more refined. however, significant negative trade-offs may occur between different metrics and denominators such that a specific practice or system may appear to have greater or lesser impacts, depending on assessment methodology. A number of tools and models have been developed to empower producers in quantifying environmental impacts, which will be increasingly important is satisfying future consumers' hunger for information as well as food. These tools must be supplied in tandem with information as to the potential consequences of changing management practices and systems. At present however, tools available are based on differing methodologies, are often opaque in their background calculations and do not necessarily account for all the factors that influence environmental impacts from livestock. There is a clear need for robust tools that can be used as standards for assessing environmental impacts from the global livestock industry and that go beyond GHG emissions to produce a more rounded holistic assessment.



Author(s):  
Rachelle DiGregorio ◽  
Harsha Gangadharbatla

Gamified self has many dimensions, one of which is self-tracking. It is an activity in which a person collects and reflects on their personal information over time. Digital tools such as pedometers, GPS-enabled mobile applications, and number-crunching websites increasingly facilitate this practice. The collection of personal information is now a commonplace activity as a result of connected devices and the Internet. Tracking is integrated into so many digital services and devices; it is more or less unavoidable. Self-tracking engages with new technology to put the power of self-improvement and self-knowledge into people's own hands by bringing game dynamics to non-game contexts. The purpose of this chapter's research is to move towards a better understanding of how self-tracking can (and will) grow in the consumer market. An online survey was conducted and results indicate that perceptions of ease of use and enjoyment of tracking tools are less influential to technology acceptance than perceptions of usefulness. Implications and future research directions are presented.



Author(s):  
Andrew Muir Wood ◽  
James Moultrie ◽  
Claudia Eckert

Companies are coming round to the idea that function and form are complimentary factors in improving the user’s experience of a product and competing in today’s saturated consumer goods markets. However, consumer perception of form is constantly changing, and this manifests itself in the evolving forms of the products that they adopt. From clothes to cameras to cars, change in form is inevitable, and design teams must account for these trends in their product design and development strategies. Through literature, semi-structured interviews with design and trend practitioners, and an archival case study of mobile phone evolution, the authors have developed theories about the continuities that occur in product forms over time, and the forces that can disrupt this behaviour. They then go on to suggest how this view of form as evolving trajectories can benefit future product design strategies.



Author(s):  
Merrill Warkentin ◽  
Kimberly Davis ◽  
Ernst Bekkering

The objective of information system security management is information assurance: to maintain confidentiality (privacy), integrity, and availability of information resources for authorized organizational end users. User authentication is a foundation procedure in the overall pursuit of these objectives, and password procedures have historically been the primary method of user authentication. There is an inverse relationship between the level of security provided by a password procedure and ease of recall for users. The longer the password and the more variability in its characters, the higher the level of security provided by such a password (because they are more difficult to violate or “crack”). However, such passwords tend to be more difficult for end users to remember, particularly when the password does not spell a recognizable word (or includes non-alphanumeric characters such as punctuation marks or other symbols). Conversely, when end users select their own more easily remembered passwords, the passwords may also be easier to crack. This study presents a new approach to entering passwords, which combines a high level of security with easy recall for the end user. The Check-Off Password System (COPS) is more secure than self-selected passwords as well as high-protection, assigned-password procedures. The present study investigates trade-offs between using COPS and three traditional password procedures, and provides a preliminary assessment of the efficacy of COPS. The study offers evidence that COPS is a valid alternative to current user authentication systems. End users perceive all password procedures tested to have equal usefulness, but the perceived ease of use of COPS passwords equals that of an established high-security password, and the new interface does not negatively affect user performance compared with that high-security password. Further research will be conducted to investigate long-term benefits.



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