Framework and Feasibility Study for Pairwise Comparison Tool

In design and engineering context, the use of tools, simulations and multi-realities is already an intrinsic part of design activities, methods and processes. To support participatory design during the ideation phase in a co-creative context, participative tools are needed. User-centered and co-creative design could benefit product creation and innovation process through data-collection (incl. product characteristics and user requirements) from individual data-mining activities. The traditional approach for customer requirements prioritization is pair-wise comparison. It is used both in the QFD method and in the Pugh matrix method. In practice, this means that a user compares two product characteristics at a time and decides which one of the two is more important or if they are equally important. Determining a suitable user interface for the comparison has proven to be the most demanding phase in the implementation of this method. This paper presents alternative ways to implement a customer property tool and discusses experiences with some of its implementations. In the first version, the interface is based on the use of numbers, whereas the last version is more visual, interactive and game-like. The feasibility of the tool was studied in user tests carried out in Finland and in the Netherlands.