A Collaborative and Interactive Surface Concept for Early Stages of New Product Development—A Multi-stage Expert Study

To come up with new ideas and innovations, product developers are faced with the challenge of finding a suitable way through a jungle of tools and methods, e.g., creativity tools, CAD software and project management applications. The goal of this paper is to develop a user interface concept for a supportive tool that integrates a variety of tools on an interactive surface to enable horizontal collaboration and interaction during creativity sessions in product development. Therefore, the user interface should not just support collaboration but also incorporate guidance to support product developers to find a suitable path through this jungle of tools and methods. To elicit requirements for such a supportive tool, an explorative multi-stage study design was chosen. In the first part expert workshops were conducted to create a design space. This space was further explored in a second phase, to derive relevant requirements. In the last phase, first visions of the supportive tool and possible design ideas were developed. The results of this study form a foundation to build a supportive tool for product developers that could pave the way to a new form of digital collaboration, provides a more holistic understanding of the development process and its activities and furthermore enhances the acceptance of creativity methods.