DRIVING FUNCTION-BASED DESIGN WITH OUTCOME-DRIVEN INPUTS

摘要

This paper presents research that integrates outcome-driven design methods with the more established function-based design methodologies. Outcome-driven design offers a more systematic approach to understanding the opportunity than the traditional and inconsistent means of gathering customer needs by exploring the reasons customers purchase products. These specific customer inputs are mapped to a process modeling technique to first broadly define how a customer will use a product. From this process model, a functional model can be extracted that abstractly captures what must happen within the product boundaries such that the product operates as intended to achieve the customers desired outcomes. An illustrative reverse engineering example is used to demonstrate the methodology. Preliminary case study validation results are discussed along with the conclusions and future work.