Data-driven design challenges in the early stages of the product development process

Abstract

With the rapid development of digital technologies, products connectivity is increasing as well as the data produced and collected. Forecasts on product development predict that this trend will keep on growing. In this context, new design solutions based on data are emerging. Those data-driven design approaches are common for identifying the customers’ need when developing a new product. However, few studies cover data-driven design in the other early stages of product design. Thus, the research question addressed in this paper is: what are the challenges of data-driven design research in the early phases of the product development process? Through a literature review and a workshop proposed at the conference DESIGN 2020, this paper offers a first glimpse of future research leads. A list of 5 challenges for data-driven design in the early stages of product design is proposed and ranked from short term to long term.