Design Thinking and QFD: two faces of the same coin?

Purpose – Organisations put considerable efforts into developing innovative products and services, capable of delivering value to customers and users. The existence of “wicked problems” calls for the creation of multidisciplinary teams and to the early incorporation of users’ feedback. A wide range of methodologies and tools have been developed to guide the design of (new) solutions with the purpose of making the process as effective and efficient as possible. Among those, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Design Thinking (DT) are particularly relevant. The aim of this paper is to explore possible connections and overlaps between DT and QFD.
Design/Methodology/Approach – Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper compares the two approaches by analysing their core principles, main stages and associated tools.
Findings – Many similarities exist in what concerns the customer-centric approach and the way creativity is embedded in the whole design process. Yet, if, on one hand DT is more in line with the dynamic and interactive nature of value creation, QFD is more robust in terms of quality planning, feasibility assessment and documentation.
Originality/Value – A considerable body of the literature on innovation presents case studies describing the application of methodologies to develop new products/services, but very fewstudies discuss the interaction that might exist between different approaches. Understanding how some methodologies and tools can be combined is of major importance to organisations that want to develop their own projects.

Ver artigo

QFD, Design Thinking, Innovation