Needfinding is an approach for developing deep insights that provide strategic direction for corporations and open up new possibilities for product development. Designers and engineers need tools and techniques to get beyond what people can explicitly state and determine their implicit needs. To develop truly successful new products, it’s not enough just to ask people what they need or want. A good portion of these failures are due to lack of understanding of end consumers and their needs. Over 90% of new products introduced into the marketplace fail.
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Needfinding is an approach that puts people and their needs at the center of product development and business strategy creation. Course work will involve readings, assignments, class participation, in-class exercises, a mid-term presentation and a final submission. They will be taught to focus on the specifics of their designs, causing them to be conscious of what drives their choices as designers and providing them with a wider range of tools to design from in successive projects. In this course, they will go through an entire design process from conceptualization to design to producing prototypes. Students will practice design through rigorous, consistent processes for thinking through the evolution of their ideas. This first semester of the four-semester studio sequence focuses on giving students experience developing designs based on a range of starting points: form, function, materiality and manufacturing process. The goal of the studio is to give students a firsthand experience of various processes involved in creating successful integrated product designs. This studio is structured for IPD students as an intensive, interdisciplinary exploration of Design as purposeful for Integrated Product Design. Prerequisite: Third or Fourth year or Graduate standing The course is designed for, but not restricted to, students of engineering and applied science and assumes no prior business education. Throughout the course emphasis is placed on decisions faced by founders, and on the sequential risks and determinants of success in the early growth phase of a technology venture.
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The course studies key areas of intellectual property, its protection and strategic value opportunity analysis and concept testing shaping technology driven inventions into customer-driven products constructing defensible competitive strategies acquiring resources in the form of capital, people and strategic partners and the founder’s leadership role in an emerging high-tech company. Through case studies and guest speakers, we introduce the knowledge and skills needed to recognize and seize a high-tech entrepreneurial opportunity – be it a product or service – and then successfully launch a startup or spin-off company. Designed expressly for students having a keen interest in technological innovation, this course investigates the roles of inventors and founders in successful technology ventures. Engineers and scientists create and lead great companies, hiring managers when and where needed to help execute their vision.