"SMART HOME" - FROM A CONCEPT TO A LIVING PRODUCT
He, Xiang (2018)
He, Xiang
Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulu
2018
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2018060713018
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2018060713018
Tiivistelmä
We live in a rapidly changing world where the most visible worldwide trends are, for example, the abundance of information, technological advancement and the growing average life expectancy of the population. This has revolutionized the development of new conceptualized products that are becoming more common and important to business life. In this study, smart home as an example of those new products was chosen to be the object with the aim of examining how to properly productize a smart home.
Although used for home automation and assistive technology mostly, the smart home concept could be applied to all situations where its key features exist. When developing smart homes for different needs, new product development processes combined with product portfolio management was the essential. Therefore, the Development Funnel (Von Stamm 2008) was used as the theoretical framework for finding the main challenges and solutions of smart home productization.
The qualitative research approach was applied for the empirical part of the study. In-depth interviews with semi-structured questions were conducted with two interviewees: a smart home entrepreneur and a designer. Product positioning, customer definition, cost-speed balancing in R&D were found as the most challenging aspects, whilst focusing on customer segmentation, holistic user experience with integrated system schemes and setting the ultimate goal as “being smarter” were seen as the main solutions.
The findings implicated a requirement for adopting the “products guiding market needs” approach and introducing industrial standards for smart homes and their development. However, because of the wide-ranging research scope and only a few primary data sources, the study had its limitations. Further research could use more interviews or study the efficiency of new product development from the “market-driven” vs “technology-pull” perspectives.
Although used for home automation and assistive technology mostly, the smart home concept could be applied to all situations where its key features exist. When developing smart homes for different needs, new product development processes combined with product portfolio management was the essential. Therefore, the Development Funnel (Von Stamm 2008) was used as the theoretical framework for finding the main challenges and solutions of smart home productization.
The qualitative research approach was applied for the empirical part of the study. In-depth interviews with semi-structured questions were conducted with two interviewees: a smart home entrepreneur and a designer. Product positioning, customer definition, cost-speed balancing in R&D were found as the most challenging aspects, whilst focusing on customer segmentation, holistic user experience with integrated system schemes and setting the ultimate goal as “being smarter” were seen as the main solutions.
The findings implicated a requirement for adopting the “products guiding market needs” approach and introducing industrial standards for smart homes and their development. However, because of the wide-ranging research scope and only a few primary data sources, the study had its limitations. Further research could use more interviews or study the efficiency of new product development from the “market-driven” vs “technology-pull” perspectives.