Mobile campaign application design with quality function deployment approach

Today the capability of new product and service development that quickly meets market expectations and satisfies customer needs has become even more important success factor for customer-oriented companies. Therefore, various new product and service development techniques have arisen in order to decrease product life cycle as well as respond to the customer demands completely and dominate the market efficiently. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is one of the most important of these new product and service development techniques. QFD is new product development technique helping design the product according to the customer's demands and expectations about this product or service. In this technique, after a planning phase, customer needs and expectations is determined, and then is decided on the technical requirements according to features of the product or service. According to determined customer expectations, technical requirements, level of severities and correlations, a House of Quality (HoQ) is created. In summary, the product quality is guaranteed even in the design phase. Software and mobile technologies are continuously varying and developing day by day. Gaining competitive advantage in product development should be tried by revising customer expectations to keep pace with this dynamic market. QFD can reach success if implemented without delay on product development in mobil application sector in which technology can be integrated very rapidly. The aim of this study is to implement Quality Function Deployment to design a new mobile campaign application in line with user expectations. A new initiative Pointat application that is planned to take place in mobile application stores in 2015 is determined as the application area. Before proceeding to the QFD application, information about the development and the current situation of mobile applications and the industry have been given. By explaining mobile application types and user analysis, better understanding of the application is targeted. As a first step of the application, three-phase QFD approach that will be used on the design of the mobile application has been described, and then it has been passed to the planning stage. In the planning stage, firstly, information about why a mobile campaign was selected has been provided and a detailed presentation of the application has been made. Then the target consumer and competitor analysis has been replaced and it has been introduced to House of Quality stages. User expectations and characteristics for mobile applications have been determined with literature review, then questionnaires for users and correlation has been prepared. Information have been collected from a group of 50 people for user questionnaire and 8 people for correlation questionnaire. In the questionnaire A that has been asked to users of mobile applications, it is wanted them to give a score between 1 and 5 for each satisfaction criteria. Here the score "1" means the lowest importance and "5" means the highest importance. The level of importance is calculated from average of replies to the customer requirements. In the questionnaire B that has been asked to the experts of mobile applications and software, it is wanted then to evaluate the correlations between user expectations and characteristics of mobile applications. Here, the number "1" means weak correlation, "3" means the medium correlation and "9" means the strong correlation. The level of correlation is calculated after determination the unit weight of each correlation. After that, first House of Quality has been built applying QFD steps in the light of these collected information. According to the analyses of the house of quality that shows the correlation between user expectations and characteristics of mobile applications, "Speed" is found to be the most important user requirement with a importance 4.89 out of 5. "Simplicity" and "Reliability" follow this with 4.68 and 4.58 importance. When the correlations between user expectations and characteristics of mobile applications was analyzed, "Provided Content" has been observed as the most important mobile application characteristic with the relative importance of 24.54%. After this, "Performance" and "Aesthetic Design" has been replaced with %21.24 and %10.55 relative importance. In addition, how and how much the mobile application characteristics affect each other is handled in correlation matrix under the roof of house of quality. There are many weak or strong positive correlations between many mobile application characteristics of smartphones. For example, while amount of content affects performance negatively, it has positive relation with provided content. Another example of these correlations is between aesthetic design and appropriate layout which has a strong positive relationship. Determining the design attributes of mobile campaign application and variables that have been planned to take place in application with literature review and brainstorming, the second and the third house of quality has been created. Application characteristics part of the first house of quality has been included as the input parameters of the second house of quality. In the same way, the design attributes of the mobile campaign application part of the second house of quality has been included as the input parameter of the third house of quality. By moving the importance ratings of the mobile application characteristics that have been observed in the previous stage to the next stage, second house of quality that shows the correlations between the mobile application characteristics and the design attributes of mobile campaign application has been built. In this stage, "Service Features", "Financial Features" and "Location Based Features" has come to the fore with %16.82, %16.56 and %15.78 relative importance. In addition, correlation between design attributes of mobile campaign application has been provided on the roof this house of quality. There is no negative correlation while lots of positive relationship was take place in there. There is a strong positive correlation between social and user specific features, service and financial features, location based and mobile specific features. Service features also have it with timely features. For the next step, importance ratings obtained in the previous stage has been moved to the next sage again and the third house of quality that indicates the correlations between design attributes and variables of mobile campaign application has been built. At this stage, "Push Notification" comes first with the relative importance % 13.15. After that, "Point" and "Coupon" follows this with %9.79 and %8.28 relative importance. Correlation between the design variables indicates that push notifications has a strong positive relationship with near campaigns and point system. Point system has also strong relationships with user profile and purchasing. Another important correlation has been take place between coupon system and purchasing. Other correlations between the design variables can be seen on the roof of third house of quality. As a result of the use of QFD on mobile campaign application design, some application variables that is expected to be a key role in order to meet user expectations have been determined. Therefore, this method has helped to this new venture by distinguishing the elements that includes high-risk and opportunity. As a result, push notifications that is delivered to end use, point and coupon system has been proved as the most important variables of the application. In result of the QFD application, primary user requirements, mobile application characteristics and design variables of mobile campaign application characteristics has also been reviewed.