A framework for predicting potential product impact during product design

Abstract

The impact of products is becoming a topic of concern in society. Product impact may fall under the categories of economic, environmental, or social impact and is defined by the effect of a product on day-to-day life. Design teams lack sufficient tools to predict the impact of products they are designing. In this paper we present a framework for the prediction of product impact during product design. This framework integrates models of the product, scenario, society, and impact into an agent-based model to predict product impact. Although this paper focuses on social impact, the framework can also be applied to economic or environmental impacts. An illustration of using the framework is also presented. Agent-based modeling has been used previously for adoption models, but it has not been extended to predict product impact. Having tools for impact prediction allows for optimizing the product design parameters to increase potential positive impact and reduce potential negative impact.