The incorporation of user needs in telecom product design

Abstract

firm supplying telecommunications equipment. It is part of a larger project in which we also observed the design of a telecom service by a network of telecommunications service supply firms, and several projects in a consumer organisation which evaluates telecom and other electronic products and services. Our approach was to observe these projects as they were unfolding. The rationale for studying ongoing design work was to observe the process by which design decisions were made, while various options were being considered, and before each decision had become, in the minds of those concerned, justified as the ‘best’ and possibly only option to choose. A design often becomes the preferred option as it is adopted, commitments are made to it, rationalisation takes place, support is enlisted and interests become bound up with the choice that has been made. One of our objectives was to use our observations to contribute to the understanding of the management of the design process. The organisation sponsoring the research was the Design Council, whose own objective is the promotion of effective design in manufacturing and service industry. The other objective was to contribute to the body of academic work currently being undertaken, in Manchester and elsewhere, which seeks to analyse design and innovation activities within an interdisciplinary framework of the social sciences, exploring the potential for rapprochement among technology management, sociology of innovation, economics of technological change, anthropology and other disciplines.