Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This study is performed in order to determine problems in Computer-Aided-Engineering (CAE) Market. A tech start-up company aims to serve a cloud-based CAE tool which is developed especially to resolve engineers’ daily issues. Anticipated problems in the market, which are slowness and poor interface, need to be validated by systematic market research for a well-directed value proposition and an efficient product-market fit. Therefore, design thinking methods are utilized to examine common problems in the CAE market. A questionnaire is prepared by authors and shared with engineers working for companies from diverse industries such as automotive, aviation, energy, R&D aerospace and more. It is spread out in social media to prevent biased answers in a definite sector. Open-ended questions are also put into the questionnaire to catch possible unknowns. Face-to-face interviews are held with a smaller group of five to get a deeper understanding. This group is asked to sort key features regarding its importance that is a DT approach named as card sorting. During the interviews another method, Moscow Chart, is used. It is found that, most important features are automatic mesh creation, user friendly interface, faster solution process, and problematic features of CAE software are multiphysics and security problems. As a conclusion, tech start-ups can be confident with their value proposition and product development aligned with this value. This makes the start-up team save time and penetrate the market faster.