Targeting Product and Service Designs to Customers' Needs

Description

This course is the second in a six-course series devoted to the Eight Steps to Getting Design Right. The title of this course is also the title of the second step in the Getting Design Right process and the focus of this course.

The primary goal of this course is to take general functional requirements of a product or service and to develop measurable performance targets from them.

This course covers Identification of Customer Needs, Measuring the Needs, Determining Technical Requirements, and the Customer Value Proposition.

By taking this course and completing its assignments, you will gain the following:

• First, the ability to translate vague customer statements into detailed product or service requirements

• Second, the ability to measure how well your product or those of your competitors meet customer needs

• Third, the skills required to get customer-­‐focused designers to communicate effectively with product-­‐focused engineers

• And finally, you'll gain improved judgment regarding how to focus on what is most important for the customer and to state it succinctly in a customer value proposition

The techniques introduced in this course will enable you to do the following in the workplace:

• First, design market surveys for conducting data collection on customer preferences

• Second, convert customer-­‐preference data into relative-­‐importance-­‐of-­‐product objectives

• And third, present multidimensional design data on a single page

The skills described in this course are situated at the interface between design and engineering. Designers typically have difficulty translating their ideas into engineering terms, while engineers, on the other hand, often have difficulty appreciating customer concerns. The content of this course is valuable because the knowledge it imparts is rare. Mastering the skills introduced here will greatly increase your value to the design organization.

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