Product Design course is a 4-year full-time program offered by design colleges in India.
A product is something sold by an enterprise to its customers.
Product development activities begin with market identification and end with the production, sale, and delivery of a product.
A product can be a physical product (books, toys, machines) or a virtual product (software, music, or video).
In this article, we will learn about the Product Design course.
This course covers various topics such as:
- Product Development Process
- Opportunity Identification
- Product Planning
- Identifying Customer Needs
- Product Specification
- Concept Generation
- Concept Selection
- Concept Testing
Product Development Process
Product Design course is an interdisciplinary activity that includes:
- Marketing: Identification of product opportunities
- Manufacturing: Production systems (Engineering and Industrial Design)
- Design: Physical form of the product
Some of the common factors that affect the product design process are:
- Structured Methods: A timeline to build the product and deliver it to customers
- Industrial Examples: Electronic devices, automobiles
- Organizational Realities: Cost, team, experience, and innovation
The Product Development Process is a sequence of steps that converts inputs into outputs.
It is a set of activities carried out by an enterprise to conceive an idea and build a commercial product, such as:
- Planning
- Concept Development
- Product Design
- Detailed Design
- Testing and Refinement
- Production
Opportunity Identification
An opportunity is an idea for a new product.
It can be a variant of an existing product or a next-generation product idea.
Opportunity identification is a process that depends on various factors such as:
- Product need
- Cost
- Competitive strategies
- Experience and capability
- Possibility of imitation
Opportunities must be properly evaluated before proceeding with product design.
All profitable products undergo rigorous opportunity identification techniques such as screening, customer feedback, surveys, etc.
Product Planning
Product planning identifies the portfolio of products to be developed by an organization.
Fundamentally, it can involve a new product, platform projects (such as wireless technology, Android, etc.), or improvements to existing products.
Technology implementation, cost, and time analysis are major considerations in product planning.
- Technology: Should be easy to use
- Cost: Must be affordable or positioned as a high-end product
- Time: Timeline to introduce the product to the market
- Competition: Effective use of resources to launch a product in competitive markets
Identifying Customer Needs
Identifying the target market for selling a product is the primary goal of a product designer.
Surveying customers through interviews and collecting raw data helps in identifying customer needs and requirements for a product.
An interviewer can ask questions to identify all the needs of a customer.
Some needs may not be technically feasible.
Needs are useful for analyzing the attributes of a product and defining its specifications.
Customer needs can be classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary to establish a hierarchical list of needs.
A great product addresses most of the critical needs of a customer.
Identifying customer needs is a crucial step in the concept development phase of the product development process.
Customer needs are helpful in generating product concepts and defining product specifications.
Product Specification
Product specification is a measurable term or metric that defines customer needs, such as:
| Need | Specification |
|---|---|
| Must be lightweight | Weight in kilograms (kg) |
| Must be portable | Dimensions |
| Must be affordable | Cost |
| Must pass safety tests | Product Ratings |
Concept Generation
A product concept is an approximate description of the technology, working principle, and form of the product.
A concept is usually a sketch or a three-dimensional model accompanied by a textual description.
The mission statement, customer needs list, and product specifications are inputs to the concept generation process.
Benchmarking is the study of existing products with functionality similar to the product under development.
It reveals the existing technology in use, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the competition.
Concept Selection
The concept selection process is a crucial part of the product development process.
It ensures that the selected concepts have the potential to satisfy customer needs and achieve economic success.
Some of the parameters used for concept selection are:
- Ease of use
- Ease of manufacturing
- Manufacturing cost
- Choice of materials or colors
- Product safety
Concept selection is carried out in two phases: concept screening and concept scoring.
Concept screening is the process of evaluating concepts against various criteria.
Concept scoring is performed to select the winning concept and finalize the best product specifications.
Concept Testing
Concept testing is the phase that tests the demand for a concept after gathering consumer needs and defining the product description and specifications.
Product developers communicate the product concept to ideal buyers through surveys, verbal descriptions, photos, sketches, storyboards, videos, computer simulations, physical appearance models, or working prototypes.
Based on consumer feedback, the ideal market for the product is defined, and forecasts and predictions are made regarding the number of units that can be sold.
