An Investigation on Information and Gender-Based Power in Product Design Decision-Making

The goal of the designed experiment and subsequent analyses presented in this paper was to investigate the power distributions especially with regards to gender in mixed-gender groups engaged in product design decision-making. The task involved determining the set of design criteria pertaining to consumer products with varying gender orientations, and rating the criteria for their importance according to various stakeholder interests. Results indicate that group level acceptance of the contributions was indeed impacted by the type of the product that the decision-making focused on, and that this impact can be attributed to the perceived knowledge levels of the individuals due to their expected familiarity with the product