Sammendrag
Prototyping has become widely adopted across engineering design practices and is suggested practical and reflective advantages in new product development. Although this has yielded increased research focus, holistic and empirically grounded insight into —what prototyping entails in projects, how prototyping is facilitated, and why prototyping should be encouraged is nevertheless limited. This thesis involves an industrial research project joint between Laerdal Medical and TrollLABS NTNU, regarding prototype-driven development in the fuzzy front end. The project considers the context of simulation-based medical training equipment and investigates how prototyping contributes to their development.
This thesis includes 11 academic contributions and 10 case projects and initiatives presented and utilized in a binding article. The research project has pursued and addressed three goals: 1.) Explore new product opportunities within the healthcare training domain. 2.) Develop and utilize new technology for healthcare training applications. 3.) Enhance process knowledge and methodological foundation on which Laerdal Medical, as the industry partner and stakeholder, develop new concepts and technology.
The collective research output of case projects, activities, and academic contributions address the two first goals, while the binding article of this thesis addresses the third. Chapters 4, 5, and 6, each viewed from an organizational level, —describe prototyping to develop new medical training equipment, facilitate prototype-driven development by wayfaring, and expand organizational knowledge by prototyping. The chapters address what, how, and why we prototype in industrial and research settings, and they account for three individual learning loops. Respectively, the chapters present empirical insights for operational, tactical, and strategic use of prototyping in the fuzzy front end of new product development.
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