Designer-moderated product design

A well-designed product can provide a firm with a competitive advantage tha t will enable it to achieve a higher market share and increased profits, Co njoint analysis procedures are often used for product design. Numerous meth ods have been developed to take conjoint data and produce optimal or near-o ptimal product designs. But conjoint analysis, while significantly contribu ting to the product design process, still has the limitation of designing a product based only on input from the consumer. Under certain circumstances , designer preferences are an important source of expertise that needs to s upplement consumer preferences in the product design problem, This research proposes a unique way of designing products using the distinct and paralle l opinions from both the consumer and the designer, a concept we call desig ner-moderated product design. This paper 1) makes a case for using designer as well as consumer preferences; 2) formulates a share-of-choices model fo r designer-moderated product designs; 3) develops and evaluates a heuristic to solve the problem using genetic algorithm techniques; and 3) presents a real application of the model and the heuristic.