Technology strategy of competing with industrial design in markets of high-tech consumer products

This thesis explores the role of industrial design in the formulation of technology strategy for certain firms that compete in markets of high-tech consumer products. The initial intuition is that the role of industrial design becomes more important at mature stages of the product evolution cycle. Industrial design makes products more user-friendly and attractive, which are highly valued by later stage, mainstream users. Successes of such firms are largely dependent on user's experiences of the firms' products. A utility-based concept model is created to formalize four components that are responsible for user's experience: functional performance (how well it does its job), capability (what jobs can the product do), usability (how easy to use the product to do its Cajnobd), aestetics (how externally beautiful is the product). The concept model is then converted into a testable framework for analyzing existing high-tech consumer product trends. A case study on the mobile phone industry is conducted to test the concept model and to understand the role of industrial design in various mobile phone evolution cycle scenarios. 36 phones are evaluated in detail and a survey is constructed to measure "prettiness" of the products. The final result confirms the initial intuition: soft factors of industrial design become more important in determining product success at later stages of the product evolution cycle.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Mak, Arthur T

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael A. M. Davies.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55225

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55225