Perceived feature utility-based product family design: a mobile phone case study

To assure profit maximization through mass customization and personalization, effectively eliciting consumer needs across different market segments is critical. Although functional performance specifications and adequacy of various design forms can be measured directly and objectively, many designers and engineers struggle with clearly evaluating product criteria requiring subjective consumer input; the fact that these inputs change over time further complicates the process. To appropriately evaluate product criteria, an effective design decision-making analysis is required. In this study, we propose a methodology to assure effective elicitation of needs and their inclusion in design decision making and illustrate it using a mobile phone product family design scenario. First, consumer perceived utility of design features is gathered using a questionnaire (500+ responses) and then modeled using multi- attribute utility theory to facilitate the evaluation of a product family while responding to needs across customer clusters shaped by demographics. The methodology goal is to determine the relative goodness of a product family in comparison to its competition. We also compare and evaluate the application of the proposed method to conjoint analysis.