A formal consideration of user tactics during product evaluation in early-stage product development

Frequent and effective design evaluation is foundational to the success of any product development effort. Products used, installed or otherwise handled by humans would benefit from an evaluation of the product while formally considering both the physical embodiment of the technology, termed technology, and the steps a user should take to use that technology, termed tactics. Formal and simultaneous evaluations of both technology and tactics are not widespread in the product design literature. Although informal evaluation methods have advantages, formal methods are also known to be effective. In this paper we propose a formal method for evaluating tactics and technology simultaneously. Unlike the published literature, this evaluation involves explicitly defined tactics in the form of a written description of the actor, environment and series of steps. It also involves the use of stage appropriate, explicitly defined tactics-dependent criteria, which include criteria from a broad range of impact categories.