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ESTIMATING DESIGN EFFORT NEEDS OF PRODUCT DESIGN PROJECTS USING CAPTURED EXPERT KNOWLEDGE – A PROPOSED METHOD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Alexander 'Freddie' Holliman ,
Avril Thomson  and
Abigail Hird
Alexander 'Freddie' Holliman*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
Avril Thomson
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
Abigail Hird
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
*
Holliman, Alexander 'Freddie', University of Strathclyde, Department of Design Manufacture and Engineering Management, United Kingdom, alexander.holliman@strath.ac.uk

Abstract

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The quick and accurate estimation of design effort can be make or break for all but the largest of product design consultancies. Traditional design project planning see designers being taken away from the metaphorical drawing board to spend time assessing project briefs and estimating workloads. Typically these designers base these estimates on their tacit knowledge and experience, and for the most part, they are accurate. However, this is time-consuming and therefore (indirectly) costly, as time spent planning, is not time spent designing. Many more sophisticated approaches for estimating design effort have been developed, but many require large bodies of past data and sophisticated analysis, such as artificial neural networks; and others have highly-specific use cases.

This paper proposes a new method to develop a design effort estimation tool for product design consultancies. This method captures the tacit knowledge and experience of design team members and the tool replicates it quickly and effectively; graphically modelling factors that influence design effort needs in product design projects.

Keywords

Project managementDesign managementOrganisation of product developmentdesign effort estimation
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 1: ICED21 , August 2021 , pp. 1391 - 1400
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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