Anders Häggman

Bio: Anders Häggman is an academic researcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Design education & Design technology. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 5 publications receiving 119 citations.

Connections between the design tool, design attributes, and user preferences in early stage design

Abstract: Gathering user feedback on provisional design concepts early in the design process has the potential to reduce time-to-market and create more satisfying products. Among the parameters that shape user response to a product, this paper investigates how design experts use sketches, physical prototypes, and computer-aided design (CAD) to generate and represent ideas, as well as how these tools are linked to design attributes and multiple measures of design quality. Eighteen expert designers individually addressed a two-hour design task using only sketches, foam prototypes, or CAD. It was found that prototyped designs were generated more quickly than those created using sketches or CAD. Analysis of 406 crowdsourced responses to the resulting designs showed that those created as prototypes were perceived as more novel, more aesthetically pleasing, and more comfortable to use. It was also found that designs perceived as more novel tended to fare poorly on all other measured qualities. Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 3 INTRODUCTION The goal of product design and development is to create products that fulfill user needs so that consumers will desire and purchase them. In early stage design, design teams generate several design alternatives, then select among them to determine one to pursue for further development [1]. A user-centered strategy to help teams select a design direction is to elicit feedback from users and other stakeholders on provisional design concepts. The design team may then incorporate this feedback into future iterations of the design. This phenomenon of obtaining feedback on provisional design representations has become even more prevalent through the rise of online crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, that present consumers with pre-production designs in order to attract financial investment. Low-cost, quick prototypes, known as “minimum viable product” designs, have been embraced by entrepreneurs as a means to pre-validate business ideas with potential customers [2]. A myriad of factors can play into a user’s responses to a provisional design, from the design’s functionality to its visual styling to the way in which a design is presented to the user. This study examines and compares two factors that can influence the way a user evaluates a design. First, this study considers the tools to create a provisional design during the exploratory, generative stage of the design process. A range of design tools may support the development of preliminary concepts, such as 2D sketches, 3D physical prototypes, Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 4 and digital models, and may do so at different levels of fidelity – from rough representations to realistic renderings. Such tools have inherent capabilities and limitations, which means the same concept created using different tools can result in different designs and thereby potentially influence the feedback that users provide. For example, a preliminary design with complex curves that may be relatively fast and easy to sketch or shape from a piece of foam may be challenging to model using CAD. Moreover, the choice of design tool is in tension with the resources required to create the design representation. Generally, the higher the fidelity of the representation, the more skill and time required to create it. Higher fidelity representations may also require that the designer make additional decisions about design details in order to achieve the desired level of representation fidelity. Second, this study examines the attributes of the design itself, which may relate to the design’s functionality, interactions, appearance, and use, among others. Key product attributes are not only what users look for when making a purchase decision, but can characterize what it means to be an innovative product [3]. For example, gas mileage may be the most important attribute to a car buyer, while screen size may be an important determinant to someone selecting a mobile phone. This study investigates the interplay between the tools used by practitioners during preliminary design, a product’s attributes, and user evaluations of a design, and Submitted to the Special Issue on “User Needs and Preferences in Engineering Design” MD-14-1619 | Yang | 5 aims to uncover significant relationships among these using relative, rather than absolute, comparisons. The following research questions are framed: • How does the choice of design tool impact the rate of idea generation and the total number of ideas produced? • What is the relationship between the choice of design tool and how users evaluate a design based on its qualities? • What is the relationship between a product’s attributes and its perceived qualities? Are certain design attributes more, or less, strongly linked to specific product qualities? • What is the interplay of the tools used to create a preliminary design and the attributes of the resulting designs?

Representation in Early Stage Design: An Analysis of the Influence of Sketching and Prototyping in Design Projects

Abstract: Sketching and prototyping of design concepts have long been valued as tools to support productive early stage design. This study investigates previous findings about the interplay between the use and timing of use of such design tools. This study evaluates such tools in the context of team design projects. General trends and statistically significant results about “sketchstorming” and prototyping suggest that, in certain constrained contexts, the focus should be on the quality of information rather than on the quantity of information generated, and that prototyping should begin as soon as possible during the design process. Ramifications of these findings are discussed in the context of educating future designers on the efficient use of design tools.

The influence of timing in exploratory prototyping and other activities in design projects

Abstract: The importance of prototyping in the design process has been widely recognized, but less research emphasis has been placed on the appropriate timing and detail of so-called "throwaway" prototyping during the preliminary design phase. Based on a study of mid-career professional graduate students, statistically significant correlations were found between the time such prototypes were created and design outcome. Building prototypes early on in the design process, or performing additional rounds of benchmarking and user interaction later on during the project (in addition to the typical early stage efforts), correlated with better design outcome, although the total time spent on these activities did not. The correlation between project presentations and reviewer scores are also touched upon. These findings suggest that the timing of design activities is more important than the time spent on them. INTRODUCTION It is widely recognized that decisions made in the early [9]stages of the design process have great bearing on the outcome of the design in terms of design success, cost of manufacturing and time to market. The later in the design process problems are identified and changes made to the design, the more costly it becomes [1-3]. The question then is, how should designers go about exploring the design space in the most efficient way possible, find a desirable design direction, and execute a successful design? on effective ways to conduct different design activities This research examines the timing of prototyping related activities in the early stages of the design process. Research has been conducted on prototyping in the early stages of the design process, with some arguing for early and frequent prototyping as a way to test ideas early [4, 5] and to help build confidence in design concepts in a team [6]. There are several different design activities that have been recognized as important to design outcome and have been widely researched. These range from prototyping and sketching to benchmarking and collecting input from end-users. Prototyping is often thought of in terms of the particular technology or materials involved in creating the prototype, such as 3D printing or aluminum stock. This paper considers prototypes from a different perspective, that of as an artifact that design teams use to evaluate potential design concepts before further development [7, 8]. These early stage prototypes are created with the express understanding that they will be discarded after evaluation, and are thus "throwaway" prototypes. Using this strategy encourages building the "cheapest" prototype that can still provide needed information, meaning that such prototypes may be made of relatively inexpensive materials and are fast to fabricate. This approach to fabrication has been expressed as "fail early to succeed sooner,"popularized by the design firm IDEO and has been widely cited as a strategy for early stage design[4].Although there has been a significant amount of research

Quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of idea generation in the wild

Abstract: New ideas are the primary building blocks in attempts to produce novel interactive technology. Numerous idea generation methods such as Brainstorming have been introduced to support this process, but there is mixed evidence regarding their effectiveness. In this paper we describe an experimental, quantitative methodology from the domain of product design research for evaluating different idea generation methods. We present prominent results from relevant literature and new data from a study of idea generation in the wild. The study focused on the effects of the physical environment, or in other words, the physical context, on designers' capacity to produce ideas. 25 students working in small groups took part in an experiment with two design tasks. Moving from an office environment to the actual surroundings of the intended use, we discovered that the change in resulting ideas was surprisingly small. Of the measured dimensions, the real-world context influenced only the feasibility of ideas, leaving quantity, novelty, utility and level of detail unaffected. This finding questions the value of diving into the context as a design idea generation practice.

A Driving Simulation Study Examining Destination Entry with iOS 5 Google Maps and a Garmin Portable GPS System

Abstract: A simulation study compared 23 young adult drivers’ task completion time, mean glance time, number of glances, and percentage of long glances while performing a navigation entry task with a Garmin portable GPS system and a mobile navigation application (iOS 5 Google Maps) on an iPod Touch. We compared participants’ performance on these tasks using the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) eye-glance acceptance criteria. We found that, irrespective of the device used, no participant was able to complete the task within the recommended total time window of 12 seconds. When entering a destination into the iOS interface, only 73.9% of the drivers meet the NHTSA criteria for long duration glances. With the Garmin system, 91.3% of the participants meet this criterion. All participants were able to maintain adequate mean off road glance durations. Finally, we compared the NHTSA recommended method of assessing all off road glances to more traditional methods of assessing glances only to the task ...

The Lean Startup:How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Abstract: Eric Ries was born in September 1978. He graduated from Yale University and moved to silicon Valley in the beginning of the millennium. He pioneered the philosophy of Lean Startup, based on his experience with multiple startups, primary being IMVU which he co-founded along with Will Harvey in 2004. Eric Ries originated his Lean Startup philosophy after getting inspired from the Japanese Philosophy of Lean Manufacturing.

Design prototyping methods: state of the art in strategies, techniques, and guidelines

Abstract: Prototyping is interwoven with nearly all product, service, and systems development efforts. A prototype is a pre-production representation of some aspect of a concept or final design. Prototyping often predetermines a large portion of resource deployment in development and influences design project success. This review surveys literature sources in engineering, management, design science, and architecture. The study is focused around design prototyping for early stage design. Insights are synthesized from critical review of the literature: key objectives of prototyping, critical review of major techniques, relationships between techniques, and a strategy matrix to connect objectives to techniques. The review is supported with exemplar prototypes provided from industrial design efforts. Techniques are roughly categorized into those that improve the outcomes of prototyping directly, and those that enable prototyping through lowering of cost and time. Compact descriptions of each technique provide a foundation to compare the potential benefits and drawbacks of each. The review concludes with a summary of key observations, highlighted opportunities in the research, and a vision of the future of prototyping. This review aims to provide a resource for designers as well as set a trajectory for continuing innovation in the scientific research of design prototyping.