The When of user engagement

Presented at the 4th Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology. 2008. Cambridge, UK.One of the most important components in the design of new products is the inclusion of input from the end users and a large body of literature exists that describes how to identify and engage relevant stakeholders. Many design tools and methodologies such as concurrent engineering (McGrath, Anthony et al. 1992) or quality function deployment (Griffin and Hauser 1993) identify consumer or user input as imporant, but there is surprisingly little guidance on precicely when it should be collected. The objective of this poster was to demonstrate how the design structure matrix (DSM) can be used to identify when to collect user input to aid in the development of better assistive technology (AT) devices