Aligning stakeholder interests : from complex systems to emerging markets

Design often requires balancing competing objectives from a variety of stakeholders. From the design of large-scale complex engineering systems to the design of end-user products for emerging markets, managing the trade-offs between different objectives from a systems-level perspective is a key challenge for design teams. This thesis investigates differences between how formal strategies can be used to balance trade-offs and how practitioners currently perform this task. Through the use of interviews, case studies, and field and laboratory experiments, this thesis seeks to examine how real-world designers approach these problems. The work investigates practitioner strategies and analyzes them to gain a better understanding of how human design teams operate. These insights are then used to inform proposed guidelines for performing design tasks in these contexts. First, observations of practitioners in space system design lead to a new way of modeling interactions between sub-systems. Then, interviews with designers working on products for emerging markets are used to formulate a new methodology, Design for Micro-Enterprise, that focuses on the needs of small-scale entrepreneurs. Results from the analysis suggest that focusing on a micro-entrepreneur's business strategy may be a successful approach to balancing both the end-user and supply chain requirements in these markets.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Austin-Breneman, Jesse

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Maria C. Yang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

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/1721.1/93867

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/93867