A matter of factor : a proposed method for identifying factors that influence design effort levels in product design

Holliman, Alexander 'Freddie' and Thomson, Avril and Hird, Abigail and Wilson, Nicola (2019) A matter of factor : a proposed method for identifying factors that influence design effort levels in product design. Proceedings of the Design Society, 1 (1). pp. 1025-1034. ISSN 2732-527X (https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.108)

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Abstract

Design effort, the amount of time required to complete a project or task (Salam et al., 2009; Salam and Bhuiyan, 2016), is a required resource for any design project which can be influenced by a number of factors. Estimating design effort is a significant challenge that can be mitigated through an understanding of these influential factors. This understanding is held as tacit knowledge by experts, earned through experience; yet, although these factors vary in type and impact, understanding their details can provide insight and improve future estimations. Some previous methods to estimate design effort identify these factors, either from: expert opinion, or historical data analysis with each approach has advantages and disadvantages. This paper is comprised of three parts: A review of published methods and tools for estimating product design effort and whether they consider and identify influential factors; an analysis of possible trends in the identification of factors influencing product design project length; and a new method for identifying the influential factors of product design project length.

ORCID iDs

Holliman, Alexander 'Freddie' ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9511-8121, Thomson, Avril ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9723-8028, Hird, Abigail ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5938-2726 and Wilson, Nicola ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6454-5400;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)