Integrating Product Functional and Decision-Making Models into a Single Survey to Better Understand Customer Requirements
Date
2015-04-29
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Abstract
In the evaluation of product value, many attributes have been identified as influential factors. Functionality is one factor considered important and of primary concern when designing a new product. However, the determination of good product functional design currently relies mostly on designer opinion based on their experience, and thus there is a subsequent risk of increased new product development investment when designing to meet customer expectations. To better understand customer requirements so that functional design can be integrated into what the customer requires, this thesis proposes a methodology to measure customer functional preferences quantitatively as a determinant of good product functional design. A purchase decision-making model based survey method is developed for collecting data about customer functional preferences. The correlation between customer functional preferences and product functional design elements are defined by the reconciliation of the purchase decision-making model and the product functional model. This methodology ultimately supports the use of statistical analysis methods such as the structured equation modeling method to quantify the correlations so that an optimal understanding of product functional design requirements can be acquired by correlative mapping from customer functional preferences. In addition, the utility of the survey method is addressed by its implementation in a smartphone application as the interface for data collection.
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Keywords
Engineering--Mechanical
Citation
Jin, T. (2015). Integrating Product Functional and Decision-Making Models into a Single Survey to Better Understand Customer Requirements (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26578