The right fidelity: Designedly representations that enhance multidisciplinary product development

In product development, representations of the intended product are needed to enable specialists to learn about what they develop together. A variety of representations is deployed, ranging from textual documents like requirements, up to integrated prototypes. The difference between these representations is the fidelity: the degree to which a...

Facilitating Team Cognition: How designers mirror what NPD teams do

Products are developed by large multi-disciplinary teams. The teams deal with many topics requiring the expertise of several specialists simultaneously. They have to decide together if something is a problem; propose multi-disciplinary solutions; and align their activities into a seamless whole. Stated differently: team members have to ‘think...