Frog design is a global design firm with 400-plus employees in nine studios around the world. Frog designed such famous products as the Apple Macintosh, and the Sony Trinitron television. Frog engaged in three kinds of activities: For each client project, frog assembled a multidisciplinary team. Frogs approach emphasizes reaching customers at a deep, emotional level. As noted by Esslingen, The magic is when both the manufacturer and consumer get something good that they dont expect.

Frogs design process was organized into three phases:

Discover: team member do significant research to understand the clients business, market, brand, users, and technology, and to identify goals, opportunities and critical success factors.

Design: team transforms intangible inspirations and ideas into tangible solutions that can be used and evaluated. This stage emphasizes rudimentary prototypes, sketches and digital renderings.

Deliver: team refines and documents the chosen solutions. All of the product specifics, models, tools, and production details are turned over to client.

Intended Outcomes

Determine advantages and disadvantages of the parallel process.

Determine appropriate leadership in championing a project.

Establish processes to involve customers and suppliers.

Recognize team diversity strategies. (CO4, CO7)

Evaluate strategic approaches to virtual teams.

Questions:

1. How do frogs activities affect its ability to (a) maximize the fit with customer needs, (b) minimize development cycle time, and (c) control development costs?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of involving customers fairly early in the design process?

3. What are the pros and cons of using computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and photorealistic renderings instead of functional prototypes in the development process?