Working Situations in Product Development � A New Approach to Evaluating the Design Process

This paper describes a new framework for approaching and evaluating product development processes by using working situations as the point of entry, and by viewing contextual factors as a means to improve design effectiveness and efficiency for the concurrent enterprise. The proposed way of achieving this is to actively configure working situations in order to ensure a better alignment between design goals, the underlying design process, design methods, and the contextual factors, including surroundings and technology. Design efficiency and effectiveness is ensured through a product program approach based on the concept of streamlining the design process by standardizing ICT tools to improve portability between working situations, and by differentiating the surroundings in order to configure value-adding environments capable of creating a collaborative atmosphere. The approach depends on finding ways of ensuring proper workplace configuration and adequate technology support in order to support design activities and processes.