You're shopping for a new vacuum cleaner, or a TV. Whose advice carries more weight for you—your friends, users who post online, or the marketing material you find on the brand's website?
Product evolution can often lead to degradation of product integrity rather than product improvement. This situation is the result of design programs run under unrealistic time schedules as consumer products are rushed to market, or of programs in which the potentials of product research efforts are underestimated. nestan teams redesigning standard consumer products often are asked to work with less than sufficient information, and companies rely heavily on existing products for examples. A limited base of information leads to consumer products developed with Incomplete or faulty design criteria, including criteria generated with arbitrary prioritization. Product research programs can be executed in reasonable time frames. Research can provide design teams with a product database, redirecting design efforts towards product improvement that accomodate a larger market share, or accomodate an identified market subgroup. narket advantages and increased sales can result. A methodology for formulating a product database is described.
An insufficient flow of information leads to inadequately designed products. There are several reasons why designers do not receive good information. Designers have no training in research, and rarely conduct their own research studies. They therefore must rely on research performed by persons in other fields. This information, in turn, is poorly adaptable to the designer’s needs. An information gap exists. Contributing to the problem are project schedules and budgets that unreasonably limit the amount of time that can be invested in the gathering and assimilation of information. On the horizon is the utilization of multi-disciplinary research teams that will apply their efforts to design. In the meantime, information gathering is a tedious process that needs to be performed as expediently and as painlessly as possible. A librarian with an understanding of the design process can be a vital member of a product design team.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.