Effective framing in design

Successful New Product Development (NPD) is a challenging activity with only 30% of new products making it to their second year on the shelves. My goal in this thesis has been to improve the success rate of new product introduction. One way NPD teams improve their chance of success is by creating a product for unmet user needs. These user needs are best identified through primary research with potential consumers by the design team. NPD also requires a diverse range of skills including business and marketing, engineering, manufacturing and industrial design. Yet team members with these skills bring with them different values, perspectives and interests that cause them to see different things as important. Although the diversity of skills is key to developing the product, the different perspectives cause difficulties when the team is still deciding on what it is that users really need and what it is they should make.;In this thesis I characterize these two important challenges facing design teams in their struggle to develop successful products: (1) the team must frame the design challenge around real user needs---to figure out what people want; and (2) the multidisciplinary team must come to agreement about this framing. Through studies of over 60 graduate NPD teams and an industry case study I characterize the role that this design team framing plays in successful NPD and propose a model to help understand how design teams negotiate towards a shared understanding of the design situation. Through a better understanding of these two dimensions and an investigation of an important framing tool, metaphor, I am able to present a set of guidelines and practices to help NPD teams navigate these difficult design phases.