New Product Design Strategy

Continuing on the subject of new product development, today I’ll discuss “Design Strategy”.
This follows the previous phase: Building the Business Case and Plan. However, applying these principles can be done anytime during concept development. Ultimately, these design strategies help you build a solid product definition and guide you to focus on what’s important during the development phase.

The Design and Development phase is more than just a different set of likely actions that each product category does differently. At its core lies strategy influencing tactics.

Five primary design strategies include:

1. Cost Advantage

   Minimize your component, assembly and production costs.

2. Design Prominence

   Focus on aesthetics, ergonomics, packaging, presentation, and innovative materials and concepts to deliver consumer value. This will come in the form of enhancements to product usability and sensory perception that will stir up emotional reactions in shoppers related to their needs and desires.

3. Feature Leadership

   Deliver cutting-edge and highly innovative solutions, then highlight how the features of your product deliver these benefits.

4. Concentrated Application

   Design the product to be tailored to the needs and wants of a particular type of customer. Make it the most appropriate option available to them in terms of fit and performance.

5. Desirable Alternative

   Design the product’s features and benefits within the scope of an existing product category or an established leader therein. This strategy will often work well within sales channels with room for category growth, but will need accompanying strategies to differentiate the product when competition heats up.

Selecting a particular strategy, or a combination thereof, involves looking at how you want to position the product in the marketplace and in the shopper’s mind. Refer to your product’s definition and its marketing strategy. This is important because each strategy involves a different set of actions and mindsets. Pursuing multiple strategies isn’t necessarily bad, but know that to be excellent in each position will require a considerable amount of time and effort. Just be aware of the following risks:

• Excessive development time increases the likelihood that the market opportunity will be diminished because of competitive offerings, shorter purchasing windows, and changes in consumer tastes and preferences.
• Distributing limited time, financial and human resources to multiple product positions will diminish the overall performance on those characteristics, resulting in mediocrity.
• A product that attempts multiple positions in the mind, will not effectively stand out for anything in particular and will not draw strong emotional appeal.

What tactics you should employ to meet the unique design strategy chosen, will depend on a second variable: the Design Situation. This indicates the degree of change that the product definition entails.

The four main design situations are:

1. Renovative

   Existing products receive minor changes and updates.

2. Adaptive

   Existing products are modified in response to technological improvements or changes in the marketplace affecting consumer demand or supply considerations.

3. Evolutionary

   New products designed based on existing technology, that deliver similar capabilities and benefits as previous or other competitive offerings.

4. Discontinuous

   Breakthrough products that differentiate themselves by either applying new technology to existing commercial applications, applying existing technology to new commercial applications, or both.

To form an effective design strategy, think first about how you want your product to be positioned, then look at the degree of change your product is going to exhibit. Each intersection of strategy and situation calls for a different approach and a variable amount of effort expended. Determine what’s best for your needs, solidify the strategy, then communicate it to your development team members and management, so they understand the priorities during the development phase and can make the most appropriate decisions based on rational intuition. This will reduce your development time and minimize any micro-management.

For more information on the various phases in NPD, visit the master page on The Stage-Gate Model of New Product Development

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Have you seen alternative principles or approaches to design strategy for product development? Please share!

Tagged as: design strategy, npd, product design, product development