Study of Methods for Documenting Product Features and Evaluating Their Quality in Industrial Design Theses

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

2 Faculty of Design, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran.

Abstract

In recent years, the intense competition across various industries has significantly increased companies’ focus on product design and development. Researchers and designers have increasingly recognized the importance of adopting efficient design and development processes, as highlighted by various studies and training programs. Identifying the exact characteristics of a product based on users’ real needs forms the foundation of the research and development process, preceding production discussions. Clear and accurate articulation of product specifications is crucial for effective communication between design and production teams, as well as decision-makers. This research has been conducted to clarify efficient and effective ways of extracting product specifications in order to reach a common language between designers, engineers and production agents. For this purpose, by reviewing the studies, the requirements raised in this regard were discussed and the necessary parameters were extracted regarding the correct way of expressing the product specifications. These parameters included five instructions regarding the writing of specifications and the necessity of determining the measurement index and ideal and marginal values in each specification. In the following, by examining several industrial design bachelor’s theses, the degree of conformity of the specifications expressed by the designers and the parameters extracted from the research was measured. The findings indicate that the most prevalent inconsistency in product specification documentation (observed in 59.9% of the analyzed theses) stems from inadequate consideration of user needs’ granularity when articulating design criteria. Also, some designers face a challenge in determining the index to measure some specifications, which requires the need to acquire more knowledge and experience in this field. It is suggested that the necessity of using these components in expressing product specifications and accuracy in determining indexes should be taken into consideration by designers and trainers in this field.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Journal of Design Thinking
Volume 5, Issue 1
June 2024
Pages 113-128

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