Crowd-Based Validation – Democratizing Product Development

In product development, it is particularly important to understand the future users of the developed products. Who exactly is our target group? How do they interact with the product? What are their expectations?

New tools and methods are needed in product development to answer these questions. Approaches such as crowdfunding allow customers to express their interest in a product at an early stage. In contrast, there are currently only a few approaches for crowd collaboration on detailed requirements and specific functions. The aim is to ultimately develop a product that has been co-designed by future users. In a thesis, you can contribute to the development of such tools and help to ensure that products are developed in the future that are optimally tailored to future customers.

Task:

The aim of this work is to identify the existing possibilities of involving future users of products in the development processes. Based on this, it should be explored how new tools for product development need to be designed to ensure that they are attractive and that the feedback from the involvement can be meaningfully utilized. The most important question that always arises is: How can we ensure that we always develop the right product for our customers in the future?

This work will form the starting point for the further design of development and validation processes and help to ensure that in future developers in a wide range of sectors (vehicles, medical technology, etc.) can incorporate customer input into the product at an early stage, thereby guaranteeing market success.

Profile:

• You have a technical interest (mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, mechatronics, engineering education, etc.)
• You are interested in how the crowd can be involved in product development activities
• You enjoy exploring new topics in product development and expanding your horizons.

Your benefits:

• Working in a new research field and on a future-relevant topic
• Learning scientific work
• The possibility of a joint scientific publication
• 1:1 coaching with a scientific staff member

Are you interested or do you have questions? Then write an email to: manuel.spekker∂kit.edu.