LA 1203 Chapter : Chapter 4 Summary
Document Summary
The design process of a product can be broken down into 6 major steps that have been established to make the process more efficient and effective. These six steps are product discovery, project planning, product definition, conceptual design, product development and product support. By focusing this process on the early phases of a products creation a higher quality and better decisions can be expected. Through an increase of communication and documentation of the design process it becomes easier to locate and fix potential problems earlier on, thus saving time and money and increasing the quality of a product. The first major step of designing a project is identifying the need for an item. The major sources of this need are a technology push, market pull or product change. Once a need, or needs, has been determined the next logical step for a company is to begin project planning in order to properly distribute the resources needed.
