Design Guidelines
This project is about developing an interactive and systematic product design development tool: web-based product design guidelines that aims to support professional and novice product designers in practice and education.
Project Leader: Dr Mark Goellner
Funding: Massey University Research Funding
Introduction:
Product designers are increasingly challenged by the interdisciplinary nature, increasing complexity and time pressure in today’s design projects (Cross, 1994), which urges the need to develop systematic design process tools that support them. A set of product design guidelines (PDG) was previously generated in the form of a comprehensive (93 pages) document as part of the Mark Goellner’s PhD study at the University of Otago (Goellner, 2005). The study with students and professional designers in New Zealand revealed that the developed PDG are very useful, but the paper format was difficult to use. It was strongly indicated that web-based PDG would be able to overcome the identified usability issues and web-based systematic design tools have been critically reviewed in this respect.
Objective:
To develop and evaluate web-based PDG as a systematic tool to support professional and novice product designers in practice and education
Research Methodology:
In collaboration with a Wellington web-design company the comprehensive web-based PDG will be developed in 2008. Following the launch and advertising of the PDG in design forums in 2008, it is planned that the web-based PDG will be evaluated for their usefulness and usability by students and professional designers in an in-depth usability study [using focus-group dyads; triads (Ireland, 2003), as well as on an ongoing basis by incorporated online evaluation by every user of the web-based PDG.
Expected Outcomes:
It is expected that newly developed web-based PDG will provide:
• an evaluation and planning tool for professional designer
• a teaching tool for design students
• a tool that supports the capabilities and competences of the AFFECT research centre
• a tool to enhance and conduct further research in systematic design methods and tools
Cross, N. (1994). Engineering design methods: Strategies for product design. Chichester: Wiley & Sons.
Goellner, M. (2005). Addressing Complexity in Product Design: Guidelines for Product Designers. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin (New Zealand).
Ireland, C. (2003). Qualitative Methods: from Boring to Brilliant. In B. Laurel (Ed.), Design Research Methods and Perspectives. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
This website is currently under development and will be launched in the near future.
