Storyboards as an Engineering Tool for Extraction of Functional Requirements

DS 116: Proceedings of the DESIGN2022 17th International Design Conference

Year: 2022
Editor: Mario Štorga, Stanko Škec, Tomislav Martinec, Dorian Marjanović
Author: Vanja Čok, Daria Vlah, Nikola Vukašinović
Series: DESIGN
Institution: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Slovenia
Section: Design Education
Page(s): 2273-2282
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2022.230
ISSN: 2732-527X (Online)

Abstract

In new product development courses, engineering students are introduced to the tools for addressing the functional or technical issues of the product. Problems arise when they need to empathise with the user to better understand how the product can be used in different contexts. To address this problem, we propose the use of storyboards as a tool to explore user behaviour and to clarify functions of the future product. The study results confirmed that storyboards are a suitable tool for understanding user-product interaction, however, the several problems encountered by the participants were outlined.

Keywords: new product development, user-centred design, design education, storyboards, functional requirements