Two-Product Trade Study

Selecting between technical, product, or user alternatives can be quickly achieved using trade studies, often with surprising results.

ATTRIBUTE SELECTION AND PRIORITIZATION

The first step is to define the attributes or success factors that are important to the users – the core of the product’s value proposition.  Since these are coming from the end user, they tend to be broadly described: “I need it to be easy to use.”  As we move forward through more trade studies or use other systems engineering tools such as the QFD house of quality, these broad attributes will be further broken down into measurable performance parameters for more detailed analysis and assessment.  For now, the broad, high-level definitions suffice to begin exploring user goals and expectations.

Next comes the relative prioritization of those attributes, based on how important each product feature is to the user.  Each attribute can be assigned a value from low to high (1-10) based on how much user value is derived from that attribute.  This is important because it reveals the relative value of all features in the product set; shown in the relative value column, this indicates the value histogram.

PRODUCT ASSESSMENT AND SCORING

The selected products are then rated in terms of performance to goal; that is, how well the product met the user expectations.  The performance rating for each attribute is multiplied by the value score to obtain the total score by attribute.  Again, this provides the relative performance score, shown in the relative score column as a histogram.

Once the feature-by-feature assessment is complete, the selection team can analyze the overall rating and total score for each product to determine which product is the best fit.

One of the benefits of the trade study is its ability to analyze performance across attributes as well as for the overall product.  In the sample trade study, the top three attributes in terms of relative importance were all performed better by Product A than Product B; however, Product B has a higher score overall and a higher rating-to-potential ratio.