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

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.

Collaborative Project Brief Scorecard Method: Evaluating Product Design Projects to Aid Design Effort Estimation

“…Mean Effect plots are generated, illustrating the behaviour of the factors at every stage of the design project. A detailed discussion on the additional advantages to this analysis is covered by Holliman et al (2019).…”

“…This paper presents the CPBS method, which builds upon the design effort influencing factor identification method proposed by Holliman et al (2019), which in-turn has developed from the research of Hird (2012). This method captured the tacit knowledge of design teams to identify and model the most influential factors of design effort in product design projects.…”

“…The author's method proposed a six-step process (described by the left column of Figure 2) similar to a traditional design of experiments approach (Fisher, 1949), to produce a series of hypothetical product design projects based on an experimental design, where the factors are the design effort influencing factors. There are three main differences between the method proposed by Holliman et al (2019) and the CPBS method: 1. The CPBS method includes the development of a series of elements to aid in the definition and quantification of each factor 2.…”

“…The CPBS Method takes the process developed by Holliman et al (2019) and produces a product design project scorecard based on the factors which have the greatest influence over design effort levels. By creating this scorecard, not only do design teams benefit from the insight generated by the originating method, but also create a valuable tool which can be used for all future projects, enabling the direct comparison between design projects and opportunities to gain further insight into the design space.…”

“…This paper discusses the Collaborative Project Brief Scorecard (CPBS) Method, a proposed method for identifying design effort influential factors in product design, to produce a scorecard tool for evaluating new projects. The foundation of this approach is taken from the influential factor identification method proposed by Holliman et al (2019). The method proposed in this paper will enable design teams to evaluate project briefs with a scorecard tool, which assigns a grade to each of the influential factors, allowing for comparisons between projects, both past and current.…”