Design offers a potent way to position and to differentiate products and can play a significant role in their success. In many ways it is the focus on deep understanding of the customer or user-what may be termed user-oriented design (UOD)-that transforms a bundle of technology with the ability to provide functionality into a ''product'' that people desire to interact with and from which they derive benefits. Even though the importance of this type of design is gaining recognition, several fundamental relationships between user-oriented design contributions and the new product development (NPD) process and outcomes (i.e., product) remain unresearched, although they are assumed. This article examines the fundamental relationships underlying the incorporation of a user orientation into the NPD process. The discussion is organized around UOD's impact in terms of enhancing collaborative new product development (process oriented), improving idea generation (process oriented), producing superior product or service solutions (product oriented), and facilitating product appropriateness and adoption (product oriented). Each of these is developed and presented in the form of a research proposition relating to the impact of user-oriented design on product development. The fundamental relationships articulated concerning UOD's impact on NPD form a conceptual framework for this approach to product design and development.For practitioners, the article suggests how user-oriented design can improve NPD through its more grounded and comprehensive approach, along with the elevated appreciation of design challenges and heightened sense of possibilities for a product being developed. For scholars, the article identifies four important areas for UOD research. In addition to the rich avenues offered for research by each of these, the framework presented provides a foundation for further study as well as the development of new measures and tools for enhancing NPD efforts.

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Considering design as an “intangible asset” (which, given new international accounting standards, is more and more often the case) leads to an examination of how successful companies tend to move from the use of design as a means of differentiation to the use of design as a means of transformation in a company.