A Matter of Factor: A Proposed Method for Identifying Factors That Influence Design Effort Levels in Product Design

DS 94: Proceedings of the Design Society: 22nd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED19)

Year: 2019
Editor: Wartzack, Sandro; Schleich, Benjamin; Gon
Author: Holliman, Alexander 'Freddie'; Thomson, Avril; Hird, Abigail; Wilson, Nicky
Series: ICED
Institution: University of Strathclyde
Section: Design management
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.108
ISSN: 2220-4342

Abstract

Design effort, the amount of time required to complete a project or task (Salam et al., 2009; Salam and Bhuiyan, 2016), is a required resource for any design project which can be influenced by a number of factors. Estimating design effort is a significant challenge that can be mitigated through an understanding of these influential factors. This understanding is held as tacit knowledge by experts, earned through experience; yet, although these factors vary in type and impact, understanding their details can provide insight and improve future estimations. Some previous methods to estimate design effort identify these factors, either from: expert opinion, or historical data analysis with each approach has advantages and disadvantages.

This paper is comprised of three parts:

A review of published methods and tools for estimating product design effort and whether they consider and identify influential factors; an analysis of possible trends in the identification of factors influencing product design project length; and a new method for identifying the influential factors of product design project length.

Keywords: Design management, Knowledge management, Project management, Design Effort Estimation

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