Abstract
The early phases of the product design process are crucial to the success of design outcomes. While information utilized during idea development has tremendous potential to impact the final design, there is a lack of understanding about the types of information utilized in industry, making it challenging to develop and teach methodologies that support the design of competitive products. As a first step in understanding this process, this study focuses on developing a framework of Information Archetypes utilized by designers in industry. This was accomplished through in-depth analysis of qualitative interviews with large software engineering companies. The results reveal two archetypes of information utilized by decision-makers within these companies during the development of new products and services. The findings of this study allow for future research that investigates the role of information during the product design process. © 2018 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.