Product Design Assignment: Review Chapter 5 & Chapter 6

Kukuh Faedlur Rahman

14522125

Chapter 5: Identifying Customer Needs

Before you start to promote your business, you need to know your customers want and why.
Good customer research helps you work out how to convince and attract the customer that
they need your products and services.
Identifying customer needs is a first step in the concept development process. There are 5
process in identifying customer needs:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Gather raw data from customers.

Interpret the raw data in terms of customer needs.
Organize the needs into a hierarchy.
Establish the relative importance of the needs
Reflect on the results and the process.

Creating

a high-quality

information

channel

from

customers

to the product

developers ensures that those who directly control the details of the product, including the
product designers,

fully understand the needs of the customer.

Lead users are a good source of customer needs because they experience new needs
months or years ahead of most customers and because they stand to benefit substan
tially from new product innovations. Furthermore, they are frequently able to articulate
their needs more clearly than typical customers. Extreme users have special needs that
may reflect latent needs among mainstream users.
Latent needs may be even more important than explicit needs in determining customer
satisfaction. Latent needs are those that many customers recognize as important in a
final product but do not or cannot articulate in advance.
Customer needs should be expressed in terms of what the product has to do, not
in terms of how the product might be implemented. Adherence to this principle leaves the
development team with maximum flexibility to generate and select product concepts.
The key benefits of the method are ensuring that the product is focused on customer
needs and that no critical customer need is forgotten; developing a clear understanding
among members of the development team of the needs of the customers in the target

market; developing a fact base to be used in generating concepts, selecting a product

concept, and establishing product specifications; and creating an archival record of the
needs phase of the development process.

Chapter 6: Product Specification

Customer

needs are generally expressed

in

the "language

of the customer." To

provide specific guidance about how to design and engineer a product,

teams estab lish a set of specifications,

which spell out in precise,

what the product has to do to be commercially

successful.

development

measurable detail

The specifications

must

reflect the customer needs, differentiate the product from the competitive products,
and be technically and economically realizable.
Specifications are typically established at least twice. Immediately after identifying the
customer

needs, the team sets target specifications. After concept selection and testing,

the team developsfinal specifications.

Target specifications represent the hopes and aspirations of the team, but they are
estab lished before the team knows the constraints the product technology will place on
what can be achieved. The team's efforts may fail to meet some of these specifications and
may exceed others, depending on the details of the product concept the team eventually
selects. The process of establishing the target specifications entails four steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Prepare the list of metrics.

Collect competitive benchmarking information.
Set ideal and marginally acceptable target values.
Reflect on the results and the process.

Final specifications

are developed

by assessing

the actual

constraints and the expected production costs using analytical

technological

and physical models.

During this refinement phase the team must make difficult trade-offs among various
desirable characteristics

of the product. The five-step

process

for refining

the

specifications is:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Develop technical models of the product.

Develop a cost model of the product.
Refine the specifications, making trade-offs where necessary.
Flow down the specifications as appropriate.
Reflect on the results and the process.

The specifications process is facilitated by several simple information systems that

can easily be created using conventional spreadsheet software. Tools such as the list
of metrics, the needs-metrics

matrix, the competitive benchmarking

charts, and the

competitive maps all support the team's decision

making by providing the team with a

way to represent and discuss the specifications.

Because of the need to utilize the best possible knowledge

of the market, the

customers, the core product technology, and the cost implications of design alternatives,
the specifications

process

requires

active

participation

from

team

members

representing the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the enterprise.