Abstract
Go/no-go decisions require engineering design teams to evaluate whether a concept is worth further investment of resources. These decisions can be difficult when product success depends on multiple stakeholders in addition to the end-user. This study proposes the Stakeholder Agreement Metric (SAM) framework to estimate the level of agreement between stakeholder preferences via the distance between optimal designs calculated from a preference model derived from conjoint analysis. The framework was compared to the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in an empirical case study describing the design and piloting of a hand tool for informal electronic waste workers in Thailand. Data from a follow-up assessment indicate the SAM estimate aligned with future metrics of stakeholder satisfaction. The study further demonstrated AHP may have practical limitations due to survey requirements. This study suggests that the SAM framework is a promising tool to further explore as a way to support designers making go/no-go decisions which involve multiple stakeholders.
