• Archives of design research
• /
• v.18 no.4 s.62
• /
• pp.105-118
• /
• 2005

Housing environment for human beings has been diversified and more convenient due to the development of high technology and civilization brought by industrialization in the 20th century. In the 21st century, how to overcome the ecological limit of biased development-centered advancement, that is, how to preserve and hand over a clean and healthy 'sustainable environment' to our next generations has been one of the most-talked about issues. Environmental symbiosis means a wider range of environmental harmony from micro-dimensional perspective to macro one. The three goals of a environmentally friendly house are to preserve global environment, to harmonize with the environment around, and to offer a healthy and comfortable living environment. From the point of view of environmental symbiosis, houses should be designed to save energy and natural resources for preservation of global environment, to collect such natural energy resources as solar heat and wind force, to recycle waste water, and recycle and reduce the amount of the waste matter. Now, the environmentally-friendly house became a new social mission that is difficult to not only challenge but also realize without conversion to a new paradigm, ecologism.

• Archives of design research
• /
• v.18 no.4 s.62
• /
• pp.95-104
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of product design and analyze the impacts of product design on quality competitiveness, product reliability, and consumer satisfaction in an attempt to provide a foundation for the theory of design management. For this empirical analysis, this study has derived the relevant measurement variables from a survey on 400 Korean manufacturing firms during the period of $August{\sim}October$ 2003. The empirical findings are summarized as follows: First, the determinants of product design are very significantly (at p<0.001) estimated to be the R&D capability, the level of R&D expenditure, the level of innovative activities(5S, TQM, 6Sigma, QC, etc.). This empirical result can support Pawar and Driva(1999)'s two principles by which the performance of product design and product development can be simultaneously evaluated in the context of CE(concurrent engineering) of NPD(newly product development) activities. Second, the hypothesis on the causality: product design${\rightarrow}$quality competitiveness${\rightarrow}$customer satisfaction${\rightarrow}$customer loyalty is very significantly (at p<0.001) accepted. This implies that product design positively affects consumer satisfaction, not directly but indirectly, by influencing quality competitiveness. This empirical result of this study can also support the studies of for example Flynn et al.(1994), Ahire et at.(1996), Afire and Dreyfus(2000) which conclude that design management is a significant determinant of product quality. The aforementioned empirical results are important in the following sense: the empirical result that quality competitiveness plays a bridging role between product design and consumer satisfaction can reconcile the traditional debate between QFD(quality function development) approach asserted by product developers and conjoint analysis maintained by marketers. The first empirical result is related to QFD approach whereas the second empirical result is related to conjoint analysis. At the same time, the empirical results of this study can support the rationale of design integration(DI) of Ettlie(1997), i.e., the coordination of the timing and substance of product development activities performed by the various disciplines and organizational functions of a product's life cycle. Finally, the policy implication (at the corporate level) from the empirical results is that successful design management(DM) requires not only the support of top management but also the removal of communication barriers, (i.e. the adoption of cross-functional teams) so that concurrent engineering(CE), the simultaneous development of product and process designs can assure product development speed, design quality, and market success.