Arthur O. Eger

Phases of Product Development: A Qualitative Complement to the Product Life Cycle

Introduction The well-known economic product life cycle describes the typical pattern of a product’s turnover over time. Although it has become a central concept in product development and marketing, it has severe practical limitations, one of the most important of which is its purely quantitative, descriptive nature. It describes the most probable pattern over time in the relative growth and decline of the numbers of a product sold, from its incubence until its extinction, but it does not say anything about the qualitative changes that the product undergoes during the different phases of its own life cycle. In other words, it is impossible to make predictions about the nature of a product’s renewal. In this paper, the six phases of the product life cycle are complemented with a set of six qualitative “product phases,” which allows for overall predictions regarding functionality, design, pricing, production technology, promotion strategies, and presentation, as well as the service level and the social behavior of a company.

Towards a Framework for Testing Drivers' Interaction with Partially Automated Driving

Partially automated driving takes away driving control from the driver in situations which allow complete automation, but leaves final responsibility for safe driving at the human operator. Accordingly, the drivers role changes to supervision, and - occasionally - intervention. For testing required solutions to support drivers new interaction with partially automated driving systems, this study proposes an assessment framework, aimed for application early within the development process while using driving simulation. We conclude that the assessment aspects within the envisioned framework should be three-fold, i.e. assess (a) Situation Awareness, (b) Accident Avoidance, and: (c) Acceptance. Measurement techniques to test these aspects have been defined. Moreover, six traffic scenarios have been evaluated for their successfulness in creating different levels of difficulty in understanding and solving traffic situations representative for the interaction between partial automation and drivers. While defining the required assessment aspects and confirming the scenarios relevance, this study is an important step to establish the desired framework.

Evolutionary product development as a design tool

In an earlier study, the six phases of the economic product life cycle were complemented with a set of six qualitative product phases, which allows us to explain in what phases of the product life cycle qualities such as functionality, ergonomics, production technology, styling, as well as the service level and the ethical behaviour of a company are important. The six product phases are called: performance, optimisation, itemisation, segmentation, individualisation and awareness. In the original study, it was proposed that the product phases follow one after another. In a follow up study, it was concluded that the last three phases often exist simultaneously. In this paper, first the results of the follow up study are summarised. After that, the results will be presented of research into if and how master students of Industrial Design Engineering were able to use the theory to create starting points for new product development.