Trihole team

Detailed design

House of Quality

We use the House of Quality to systematically develop a product with input from the voice of the
customer analysis. In the House of Quality, the product development team starts by listing the
Customer Requirements, or the "Whats". Each of the customer requirements are assigned a
numeric weight/importance factor determined by the team's goals for the product. For
the Trihole product development process, the following customer requirements have
been established by the team:

Offensiveness: an offensiveness factor has been determined from the voice of the
customer analysis as one of the customer requirements. Offensiveness can be measured in
different ways including ways points can be scored, a measurement of how successful a team is
trying to score, among others.

Defensiveness: it can be measured by how a team is able to deter another team from
scoring. This is another feature our customers want to see in a product.

Fun: it is definitely a feature every game should have.

Cost: should be kept at a minimum, and will be determined by the manufacturing cost,
weight (because of shipping), and other reasons. It is measured in currency.

Portability: Another customer requirement is to have the ability to transport the game
equipment. Portability is met by minimizing the weight and volume, which can be determined by
the materials used and number of game pieces.
 Visual Appeal: the appeal to different customers can be determined by the products
visual appeal, and different themes can reach different customers.

On the next section of the house of quality, we introduce the quality characteristics, or "Hows".
The quality characteristics are proposed product features which have the objective of satisfying
the customer requirements. For our product, we have specified the following quality
characteristics or "hows":

Hole Size

Obstacles

Rules

Bag Size

Number Of Different Bags

Shape Of The Board

Dimensions (Volumetric Size)

Total Number Of Pieces

Weight

Team Dynamics

Scoring Options

Colors

The effect of each "how" and its relationship to the customer requirement can be determined by
specific methodology, surveys, testing, etc., and depends on the specific characteristic. The
relationships between "hows" and "whats" are specified by the team using the relevant
technique, and at the same time a target or limit value is assigned to each of the quality
characteristics. A level of difficulty towards the attainment of the specified target is also set. A
combination of the level of difficulty, the relationship and correlation between "whats" and
"hows" and the weight of each of the customer requirements helps the team determine which of
the qualities have a stronger effect towards the improvement of the product. In turn, the team
can focus its resources on developing the characteristics that will improve the design the most,
and also will allow the team to make tradeoffs with a good perspective of its potential effect on
the product.

Initially, the quality characteristics or "hows" are listed as broad features. Those broad features
then become the "whats" on a subsequent iteration of the House of Quality, and more detailed
characteristics will take the "whats" place in the "hows" section, i.e., we will go into more detail
on how we achieve the targets of the proposed features or "hows" by listing specific product
qualities and relating them to the more broad quality characteristics and to each other.

There are several advantages to using the House of Quality approach to product development.
The output of this systematic product development process is the detailed design parameters
from which the team can build a working product. Advantages of the House of Quality also
include the relationship between all factors of the product development process, i.e., the effect
of each product feature on each of the customer requirements is analyzed in and measured,
creating awareness for the team about features that have a negative effect on the customer
requirements.