Elicitation and development of product requirements are crucial aspects of front-end design and have significant impacts on future product success. This study sought to better understand how novice designers approach the development of product requirements during a front-end design task. Results showed that the stakeholder validity of participants' requirements and the level of tailoring of the requirements to the design context and stakeholders were highly correlated to the number of distinct information sources used and moderately correlated to participants' dependency on particular information sources. Furthermore, an in-depth exploration of participants' information gathering behavior during the design task elucidated specific strategies and processes that may explain why some participants were more successful than others.
Issue Section:
Incorporating User Needs into Engineering Design
Topics:
Design
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