Using the ACD3-ladder to manage multi-phase requirements on end-user products

Paper in proceeding, 2017

During the development of any end-user product, a multitude of design decisions need to be made. But if design activities and decisions happen at the wrong time, or not at all, unintentional and sometimes negative design outcomes can be the result. Determining all requirements early in the product development is traditionally recommended, but may force design decisions to be made prematurely on the basis of incomplete preconditions. Requirements at different degrees of resolution are useful and purposeful at different stages of the development process. To address these requirements management challenges, this paper proposes an approach for incrementally developing requirements in parallel with design, based upon a previously developed framework called ACD³, which draws on a combination of theoretically compatible ideas and concepts from Design Engineering, Human Factors/Ergonomics, Usability and Systems Theory. This approach helps designers identify and handle the possible interdependencies of design variables. The paper also theoretically motivates and demonstrates with an example how the different resolution levels of requirements relate within the framework.