Knowledge usage in new product development (NPD)

New product development (NPD) can be described as both complex and multidisciplinary, and also as an activity that often requires significant amounts of design knowledge. Typically, there will be a large body of knowledge that designers can call upon, and use, during the design process from many areas including human factors, materials, business, manufacturing technologies and so on. The provision of this knowledge to designers during the design process is vital to the successful development of the product or system being designed, and to the future competitiveness of the company involved. Given that even the most routine of design tasks is dependent upon vast amounts of expert knowledge and supporting information, there is an obvious need for some sort of support which will free designers from much of the drudgery involved in searching and locating appropriate knowledge. This paper presents the findings from an initial review of designers knowledge needs in small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) who are involved in new product design and development. This review forms part of a larger ongoing study which is concerned with the development of a support framework for representing and providing design knowledge

Systems modelling approaches to the design of safe healthcare delivery: ease of use and usefulness perceived by healthcare worker

The UK health service, which had been diagnosed to be seriously out of step with good design practice, has been recommended to obtain knowledge of design and risk management practice from other safety-critical industries. While these other industries have benefited from a broad range of systems modelling approaches, healthcare remains a long way behind. In order to investigate the healthcare-specific applicability of systems modelling approaches, this study identified ten distinct methods through meta-model analysis. We then evaluated healthcare workers’ perception on ‘ease of use’ and ‘usefulness.’ The characterisation of the systems modelling methods showed that each method had particular capabilities to describe specific aspects of a complex system. However, the healthcare workers found that some of the methods, although potentially very useful, would be difficult to understand, particularly without prior experience. This study provides valuable insights into a better use of the systems modelling methods in healthcare

Manufacturer's perspective on inclusive design drivers and barriers - developing countries case

Inclusive Design aims to ensure that the design needs of the largest possible audience are addressed. Developing countries contribute about 41% of the global population and the percentage of older people and people with disabilities is increasing, which further highlights the need for an inclusive design approach. This discusses the demographics and the need to consider the design needs of this large segment of the world population. Exploration of drivers and barriers to inclusive design are identified so that strategies can be devised to promote drivers and remove barriers. This ongoing research will be based on a survey that will be used to collect manufacturer’s perspective on these issues. Data analysis will provide an opportunity to understand the manufacturer’s perspective and how understanding and awareness can be increased. This research will improve the lives of people in developing countries and will highlight business opportunities for local and international manufacturing companies

Estimating exclusion: a tool to help designers

An exclusion audit assesses how inclusive a product or service is. This is useful for comparing designs and identifying points for improvement. In an exclusion audit, the designer or usability expert identifies the demands a product places on the user‟s capabilities and enters these into an exclusion calculator. This software then estimates the proportion of the adult British population who would be excluded from using the product because their capabilities do not meet these demands. This paper describes research on improving the exclusion calculator based on a recent reanalysis of the calculator‟s underlying dataset. This enabled the capabilities to be broken down into more specific sub-categories or “demand types”. An experiment investigated the use of these demand types in the context of an exclusion audit. It found that participants could determine the demand type of an action consistently, in the majority of cases. This approach was adopted in a redesign of the calculator, described in this paper

Understanding the co-occurrence of ability loss

Understanding the co-occurrence of ability los

Quantifying exclusion for tasks related to product interaction

Quantifying exclusion for tasks related to product interactio