ABSTRACT
Product planning includes spotting an opportunity, conducting market research, analysing competing products, proposing a new product and drawing up both an opportunity specification and a design specification. This topic takes up more pages than any other in the book, which is appropriate because it is probably the most important. That might seem strange in a book on product design. How come the most important topic comes before the start of the actual product design process? Well, there are good reasons for this. Remember from Chapter 2 that products which are clearly and precisely specified before the start of development have three times the chance of succeeding than those that do not. Remember also that a lot of the decisions that determine what the product must do, who it must appeal to and what constraints it must meet are decided at this stage. In other words, a great many of the product design decisions are made at this stage even though the actual design process has not yet started. Remember, most important of all, that the work done at this stage is comparatively cheap. Spending a lot of time and effort getting the product planning right is time well spent, compared to trying to correct problems later.
