Based on the current situations, this research was focused on finding out barriers within collaborative product development teams and developing a practical tool that can help improve the collaborative works between different team members. In order to understand current barriers in collaborative product development teams, a literature review was first conducted and this was followed by a semi-structured interview with six designers.
INTRODUCTION
Background
In the new product development (NPD) process, it also adopts and emphasizes the importance of cross-functional connections that different collaborators work together in a team to create synergy through the interaction with each other (Chung, 2009; Pinto & Pinto, 1990) . For more than a decade, researchers have explored the benefits of removing organizational boundaries between participants in the new product development process (Jassawalla & Sashittal.
Research Goals
Jassawalla & Sashittal, 1999), and also the inevitable disagreements of functionally diverse team members often seem to disrupt the collaborative environment (Keller, 2001; Lam & Chin, 2005; Lovelace, Shapiro, & Weingart, 2001; Ramesh & Tiwana, 1999). ). These frequent misunderstandings and conflicts can result in a huge loss of company revenue considering development time and cost, which are emerging as one of the main concerns for manufacturers because product development cycles are becoming faster. to keep up with user needs and high competition among manufacturers. companies in the same line of business (Kichuk & Wiesner, 1997; Shani, Sena, & Olin, 2003).
Thesis Outline
To make a quick decision and reduce development time for creating successful products with a variety of different team members, the hands-on method is essential.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- The definition of collaborative product development team
- Case studies of collaborative product development
- Factors that affect collaborative product development team
- Different ‘Thought Worlds’
- Team disagreement
- Fairness
- Organizational factor
- Other studies for collaborative environment
- Personal differences impacting on team performance
- Relationship between different team members
- The assigned role of each team member
- Positive and negative aspects of different inclinations
- Understanding communication tools
- Collaborative development tools
- Conclusions
The number of team members in the project depends on the scope of the project, the development period and the size of the company. There are many types of conflicts in the product development process such as task conflict, overlapping responsibilities, and conflicting organizational goals.
IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS IN CURRENT DESIGN PRACTICE
- Introduction
- Method
- Participants
- Materials
- Procedure
- Results
- Analysis method
- Major problems in each development process
- Conflicts between different teams in collaborative product development
- The causes of conflict between different team members
- Suggestions for resolving the conflicts
- Conclusions
In actual use, participants used the map efficiently, and it also significantly reduced the time to write and draw the product development process and the relationship between different team members at each development stage. The supporting cards consist of two different cards; product development process maps and team member role maps. Role cards categorize the collaborative product development team members into six roles: product manager, industrial designer, marketing specialist, development engineer, interaction designer, and usability specialist (see Figure 8 and Table 5).
These cards were developed primarily based on Van Kuijk's (2010) categorization of product development team members and additional supporting information from relevant literature. Put the product development process cards in order based on the current product development process in your company. Early in the process, each team's different purpose for driving product development causes frequent conflicts.
In the leading UX designer project, product designers act as a supporting team for the UX designers throughout the process of product development. This often happens because designers do not have ideal communication tools to persuade marketers and engineers throughout the product development process. Designers believe that idea sharing in numbers makes for an ineffective communication environment in the collaborative product development team.
In this case, the interviewees mentioned that working in one space is better for collaborative product development.
DEVELOPING SOLUTIONS
Introduction
First the purpose and main schedule were explained for 10 minutes and the 'Idea Generation' session was conducted by three different groups for 40 minutes. In this session, the participants were asked to come up with any ideas and suggestions about the conflicts that I found during the interview. Then, for another 40 minutes, the 'Idea Update' session continued, building on the ideas generated in the previous session.
In this session, the participants categorized the suggested ideas into several groups and selected possible solutions.
The result of idea workshop
The direction of tool development
Finally, the final aim of this chapter is to propose solutions based on two directions; First, different team members need to talk together more often to improve their collaborative environment. Following the directions, two different solutions were developed for common conflicts and newly emerging conflicts; one is for common conflicts, which is a conversation toolkit that helps each product development team member such as designers, managers, engineers, and marketers to discuss which conflicts frequently occur between each other, and which solutions are essential to reduce the conflicts. The other solution is to develop common sense to solve the new emerging conflicts between product and UX designers.
To suggest the solution for new emerging conflicts, study for understanding the relationship between product and UX designers was also done.
A conversation toolkit for general conflicts
- Tasks of major team members for each product development process
- Common causes of conflict card
- Suggestions for the conflicts
- Conflicts between different teams and different designers
- The use of a conversation toolkit
In order to make it easier for users to use the card and make it easier for them to intuitively understand each card, supporting pictograms are used as an additional explanation. In addition, suggestions for reducing conflict are marked at the bottom of the card, and all suggestions are derived from the interview and literature review. It is better for the project manager to gather all the opinions of different team members and make a decision.
Managers need to listen to designers about the data they actually need and instead factor needs into their market research. In many cases, designers express their ideas too emotionally, although this is not a good way. The emotional aspect is important, but they must also be able to explain their ideas.
In the product development process, some conflicts occur between different team members and even project managers, and the other conflicts occur between designers. For example, the maps can be places after the general product development process maps are placed to think separately about the conflicts between different team members and within the designers.
Additional study for newly emerging conflicts
- Different characteristics of product and UX designers
- UX designer’s specialties
- Product designer’s specialties
- The importance of close relationship between product and UX designers
- Product and UX designers’ roles in different products
- Product and UX designers’ assigned roles in each development process
In this part, UX designers transform user research data into meaningful clusters and propose a key direction for product development. In the current product development process, UX designers mostly suggest the direction of product development, but radical ideas are developed by product designers through the concepts of UX designers. If the company is a large telecommunications company or its main strategic opportunities are intangible digital products such as web and mobile applications (see Figure 24), then UX designers will take a more important role in defining/designing this project.
If the company is a mobile device manufacturer, UX designers will still play the prominent role, but there will also be product designers on the project to develop the physical form. If a company makes treadmills, the balance of importance in defining UX designers may shift a little more towards the product designers, since the primary function of the product is a physical interaction. If the main offering is a physical product, the UX designers will play more of a supporting role.
However, keep in mind that the product does not necessarily have to be digital products for UX designers to make a significant contribution. However, the UX designers should consult throughout the remainder of the project to ensure that the design does not prioritize aesthetics over user experience.
A common sense toolkit for newly emerging conflicts
- Slide#1 Different Specialties of different team members in product development
- Slide#2 The main causes of conflicts between product and UX designers
- Slide#3 Clear differences between product and UX designers’ roles
- Slide#4 The flexibility of their roles in different products
- Slide#5 Assigned roles in each product development process
- Slide#6 The importance of the relationship between product and UX designers
This section shows how different team members such as project managers, engineers, marketers, product designers and UX designers work together with their specialties. This part explains the main factors that create serious conflicts between product and UX designers with supporting quotes. For example, product designers are doing the study of product form and CMF (color, material, finish), and UX designers are doing user research, design strategy, and usability testing as their primary responsibilities.
Depending on the different product characteristics, the main roles of product designers and UX designers are very flexible. By showing the different roles of product and UX designers role, designers and managers can understand the specific roles of product and UX designers in their project team. This section shows different roles of product and UX designers in each product development process;.
Finally, this section provides a story that explains why the collaborative relationship between product and UX designers is becoming very important in today's industry. It especially emphasizes the collaborative relationship between product and UX designers to create innovative ideas and products in the product development process.
THE VALIDATION OF THE TOOLKIT
Expert Review
Focus Group Interview
Results
The common causes of conflict cards (see Figure 32) have suggestion numbers at the bottom as a guide to finding ideal suggestions. When practitioners selected some causes of conflict cards, they immediately tried to find the suggestion cards (see Figure 33) that were on the causes of conflict cards. To solve the problems, it is better to talk to each other with open cards, which do not have the guide number for suggestions.
Conclusions
This suggestion tool will help product development team members understand the current conflicts they have and the root causes of conflicts, and product and UX designers and other stakeholders can understand the importance of the relationship between product designers and UX. As a result, the main contribution of this research is to help people eliminate or reduce frequent conflicts in their collaborative teams and save time and cost to accelerate the process of better product development. For the "conversation tool", it should be developed as a workshop-based toolkit with a facilitator.
Although they have this conversation tool, in the real field it is very difficult to come together to discuss their conflicts and solutions themselves. Ideas in the workplace: a new approach for organizing the vague front end of the innovation process. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Latin American Conference on Human-computer interaction, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Patterns of collaboration during new product development between marketing, operations, and R&D: Implications for project performance. The impact of user-oriented design on new product development: An examination of fundamental relationships*.
