The National Science Foundation has awarded Associate Professor Carlye Lauff (Product Design) an EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to characterize how prototype testing sessions generate actionable design knowledge during early-stage product innovation.
Design and engineering teams in manufacturing and product innovation must make critical decisions early that affect the success of the end product. How can teams make informed decisions and learn from them to improve outcomes? Prototype testing is widely used to evaluate assumptions, engage stakeholders, and guide design decisions before late stage constraints take hold and design changes become costly. Prototype testing sessions generate significant information, but it can be difficult for teams to prioritize that information. Teams often lack evidence-based guidance for planning prototype testing sessions that generate actionable insights. When testing is poorly aligned with the questions a team needs to answer, designers can miss critical stakeholder insights, rely on weak assumptions about manufacturability or feasibility, and carry uncertainty into later stages of development. This can lead to product failure, costly late-stage material, manufacturing, or design changes, or safety risks for users.
With funding from NSF’s Engineering Design and Systems Engineering (EDSE) program, Dr. Lauff and her research team in the CoLab Research Group aim to establish an empirical framework for linking prototype testing practices to the type, depth, and impact of design knowledge generated during conceptual design. This project builds on an ongoing industry study of prototype testing sessions to examine how testing strategies, prototype attributes, stakeholder interactions, session structure, and manufacturing-related considerations influence what designers learn and how that learning shapes subsequent design decisions. The team will observe prototype testing in advanced medical device development, where teams must coordinate stakeholder needs, usability, technical feasibility, manufacturability, regulatory constraints, and evolving requirements.
"This research has the potential to make sense of the ‘fuzzy front end’ of the design process when there are so many unknowns, yet the impact of decisions is high" Lauff says.
This study will characterize how prototype testing generates actionable design knowledge. Based on this evidence, PI Lauff will develop a methodological framework for studying knowledge generation in engineering design and create practical guidance for prototype testing in design education and industry.
The project will also develop an AI-ready schema that represents session goals, prototype attributes, testing strategies, stakeholder interactions, manufacturing considerations, learning outcomes, and downstream design changes. This schema will establish a foundation for future human-in-the-loop AI/ML-enabled tools that support prototype testing planning.
Insights from this project will inform approaches to broad challenges in complex product innovation, including those shaped by advanced manufacturing and future AI/ML-enabled design support.
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Engineering Design and Systems Engineering program within the Directorate of Engineering’s Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (Award #2630527).
PI Lauff is an Associate Professor in the School of Product Design and Co-Director of the CoLab Research Group. Lauff was a 2024–2026 McKnight Land-Grant Professor.
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