Unit-4,5

Product Development Process:

Phase 0. Planning:

Product planning is usually done in two steps-

Step I;
(i)The first step is a quick investigation and scoping of the project to determine the possible
markets and whether the product is in alignment with the corporate strategic plan.
(ii) It also involves preliminary engineering assessment to determine technical and
manufacturing feasibility.
Step II: detailed investigation to build the business case for the project.
(i)It involves personnel from marketing, design, manufacturing, finance, and possibly legal
(ii) In making the business case, marketing completes a detailed marketing analysis that
involves market segmentation to identify the target market, the product positioning, and the
product benefits.

Phase I. Concept Development:

1. It considers the different ways the product and each subsystem can be designed.
2. The development team takes what is known about the potential customers from Phase 0,
adds its own knowledge base and fashions this into a carefully crafted product design
specification (PDS).

Phase II. System Level Design:

1. It is where the functions of the product are examined, leading to the division of the product
into various subsystems.
2. In addition, alternative ways of arranging the subsystems into a product architecture are
studied.

Phase III. Detail Design: (Already discussed in unit 2)

Phase IV. Testing and Refinement:

1. It is concerned with making and testing many preproduction versions of the product.
2. These are working models of the product made from parts with the same dimensions and using the same
materials as the production version of the product.

Phase V. Production Ramp-up:

1. The manufacturing operation begins to make and assemble the product using the intended
production system.
2. Early products produced during ramp-up often are supplied to preferred customers and studied
carefully to find any defects.
Identification of Customer Needs:

I. Preliminary Research on Customers’ Needs:

1. In a large company, the research on customer needs for a particular product or for the development of a
new product is done using a number of formal methods and by different business units.
2. The natural focus of marketing specialists is the buyer of the product and similar products.

II. Gathering Information From Customer:

1. Interviews with customers: Active marketing and sales forces should be continuously
meeting with current and potential customers.
2. Focus groups: A focus group is a moderated discussion with 6 to 12 customers or
targeted customers of a product.
3. Customer complaints: A sure way to learn about needs for product improvement
is from customer complaints.
4. Warranty data: Product service centres and warranty departments are a rich and
important source of data on the quality of an existing product.

Customer Need:

1.Physiological needs: such as thirst, hunger, sex, sleep, shelter, and exercise. These
constitute the basic needs of the body, and until they are satisfied, they remain the prime
influence on the individual’s behaviour.
2.Safety and security needs, which include protection against danger, deprivation, and
threat. When the bodily needs are satisfied, the safety and security needs become dominant.
3.Social needs for love and esteem by others. These needs include belonging to groups,
group identity, and social acceptance.
4.Psychological needs for self-esteem and self-respect and for accomplishment and
recognition.
5.Self-fulfillment needs for the realization of one’s full potential through self development,
creativity, and self-expression.

Marketing And Marketing Essentials:

Market: The market is an economic construct to identify those persons or organizations that have an
interest in purchasing or selling a particular product, and to create an arena for their transactions.

Market Segmentation:

Four broad categories of variables are useful in segmenting a market:

1.State of Being-
Sociological factors—age, gender, income, occupation
For industrial products—company size, industry classification (SIC code), nature of the
buying organization
Location—urban, suburban, rural; regions of the country or world
2.State of Mind- This category attempts to describe the attitudes, values, and lifestyles of
potential customers.
3.Product Usage- looks at how the product is bought or sold Heavy user; light user;
nonuser
Loyalty: to your brand; to competitor’s brand; indifferent
4.Benefit Segmentation-attempts to identify the benefits people perceive in buying the
product. This is particularly important when introducing a new product. When the target
market is identified with benefits in mind, it allows the product developers to add features
that will provide those benefits.
Functions of Marketing Department:

1. The marketing department in a company creates and manages the company’s

relationship with its customers.
2. The marketing department can be expected to do a number of tasks:
(i) Preliminary marketing assessment: a quick scoping of the potential sales, competition,
and market share at the very early stages of the product development.
(ii) Detailed market study: This involves face-to-face interviews with potential customers to
determine their needs, wants, preferences, likes, and dislikes.
(iii) Plays a vital role in assisting with the introduction of the product into the marketplace.
3.They perform such functions as undertaking customer tests or field trials (beta test) of the
product, planning for test marketing (sales) in restricted regions, advising on product
packaging and warning labels, preparing user instruction manuals and documentation,
arranging for user instruction, and advising on advertising.

A marketing plan should contain the following information:

1. Evaluation of market segments, with clear explanation of reasons for choosing the target
market
2. Identify competitive products
3. Identify early product adopters
4. Clear understanding of benefits of product to customers
5. Estimation of the market size in terms of dollars and units sold, and market share
6. Determine the breadth of the product line, and number of product variants
7. Estimation of product life
8. Determine the product volume/price relationships
9. Complete financial plan including time to market, ten-year projection of costs and income

Technological Innovation:

1. Invention: The creative act whereby an idea is conceived, articulated, and recorded.
2. Innovation: The process by which an invention or idea is brought into successful practice
and is utilized by the economy.
3. Diffusion: The successive and widespread implementation and adoption of successful
innovations.
Types of Technology Innovation:

1. Need-driven innovation , where the development team seeks to fi ll an identifi ed gap in

performance or product cost (technology pull)
2. Radical innovation , which leads to widespread change and a whole new technology, and
arises from basic research (technology push)

Visual Design:

Visual design focuses on the aesthetics of a site and its related materials by strategically
implementing images, colours, fonts, and other elements. A successful visual design does
not take away from the content on the page or function. Instead, it enhances it by engaging
users and helping to build trust and interest in the brand.

Principles for Creating a Visual Design:

 Unity has to do with all elements on a page visually or conceptually appearing to belong
together. Visual design must strike a balance between unity and variety to avoid a dull or
overwhelming design.
 Gestalt, in visual design, helps users perceive the overall design as opposed to
individual elements. If the design elements are arranged properly, the Gestalt of the
overall design will be very clear.
 Space is “defined when something is placed in it”, according to Alex White in his
book, The Elements of Graphic Design. Incorporating space into a design helps reduce
noise, increase readability, and/or create illusion. White space is an important part of
your layout strategy.
 Hierarchy shows the difference in significance between items. Designers often create
hierarchies through different font sizes, colors, and placement on the page. Usually,
items at the top are perceived as most important.
 Contrast focuses on making items stand out by emphasizing differences in size, color,
direction, and other characteristics.
 Scale identifies a range of sizes; it creates interest and depth by demonstrating how
each item relates to each other based on size.
 Dominance focuses on having one element as the focal point and others being
subordinate. This is often done through scaling and contrasting Concurrent
(Simultaneous) engineering is the
 systematic approach to the integrated, systematic approach to the integrated,
concurrent
 design of products and their related processes, including design of products and their
related processes, including
 manufacture and support. manufacture and support.
  This approach This approach (CE) is intended to cause the developers, is intended
to cause the developers,
 from the outset, to consider all elements of the product from the outset, to consider
all elements of the product
 life cycle from conception to disposal, including quality, life cycle from conception to
disposal, including quality,
 cost, schedule, and user requirements on size, colour, position, shape, etc.
 Similarity refers to creating continuity throughout a design without direct duplication.
Similarity is used to make pieces work together over an interface and help users learn
the interface quicker

User–Centric Design:

1.It is a framework of processes (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which the

needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product, service or process are given
extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

2. User-centric design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that

not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but
also to test the validity of their assumptions with regard to user behaviour in real world tests
with actual users at each stage of the process from requirements, concepts, pre-production
models, mid production and post-production creating a circle of proof back to and confirming
or modifying the original requirements.

3.Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to
understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each
user's learning curve may look like.

Optimization:

An act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as

fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible; specifically : the mathematical procedures
(as finding the maximum of a function) involved in this.

Reverse Engineering:

1. A process similar to but more narrow than benchmarking is reverse engineering.

2. In its most unsavoury embodiment, reverse engineering is done for the sole purpose of
copying a product.
3. Reverse engineering gives a snapshot of how other designers have combined parts to
meet customer needs.
4.It is defined as the dismantling of a product to determine the selection and arrangement of
component parts and gain insight about how the product is made.
Benchmarking:

1. Benchmarking is a process for measuring a company’s operations against the best

practices of companies both inside and outside of their industry.
2. Benchmarking can be applied to all aspects of a business
3. It is a way to learn from other businesses through an exchange of information.
4. It takes its name from the surveyor’s benchmark or reference point from which elevations
are measured.
There are two primary types of benchmarking:

 Internal benchmarking: comparison of practices and performance between teams,

individuals or groups within an organization
 External benchmarking: comparison of organizational performance to industry peers
or across industries

Different Techniques for Concept Generation:

1. Brainstorming:

(i) It makes use of the broad experience and knowledge of groups of individuals.
(ii) The brainstorming process is structured to overcome many of the mental blocks that curb
individual creativity in team members who are left to generate ideas on their own.
(iii)Active participation of different individuals in the idea generation process overcomes most
perceptual, intellectual, and cultural mental blocks.

2. Random Input Techniques:

(i) An act of provocation is needed to make the brain switch from one pattern of thought to
another.
(ii) The provocative event interrupts the current thinking process by introducing a new
problem representation, providing a new probe for a memory search, or leading to a
restructuring of the solution plan.

3. Synectics: An Inventive Method Based on Analogy:

(i) Synectics is a formalized process led by a highly trained facilitator that proceeds in
stages.
(ii) The first stage of Synectics is to understand the problem.
(iii) the second phase searches for creative solutions
(iv) The objective is to distance your mind from the problem using analogies, and then to
couple them with the problem in the last phase of Synectics

4.Concept Map:

(i) A very useful tool for the generation of ideas by association, and for organizing
information in preparation for writing a report, is the concept map
(ii) A concept map is good for generating and recording ideas during brainstorming.
(iii) Because it is a visual method instead of a verbal one,