Multimedia and co-operative work in new product development: a participatory approach to virtual prototyping

In order to be successful, new product development requires a balance between market pull and technology push. On a project level this involves forging a link between the (technical) capabilities of the company and the needs of the market place. This paper describes an approach to forge this link early in the development process. Central to this approach is the use of advanced support tools. Group support technology is used to facilitate the interaction processes between and among product developments and future users and multimedia technology is used to transform designs into virtual prototypes. The approach is illustrated by a case study of the development of a new Internet Service