A Pilot Study of Customer Requirement Derivation Methods Among Engineering Students

It is desirable for designers to use formal representations when interpreting customer need statements. However, to date there is no methodology that systematically evaluates the quality of information generated by a specific customer requirement derivation (CRD) method. This work develops and applies an evaluation framework that compares a traditional method rooted in work from Pahl and Beitz, and Ulrich and Eppinger, with approaches derived from affordance modeling literature. The framework is based on eight metrics derived from extant literature. Results of a pilot study involving sophomore engineering students suggest that no method is dominant but there are differences among methods on most metrics. The framework lays the basis for further research on CRD methods and offers insights for engineering education and engineers in practice.