Teaching Market-Driven Engineering Design with an Agent-Based Simulation Tool - Article

Oct 15, 2026

In product design, a mismatch often exists between engineers defining product characteristics and marketing teams determining what best supports market success. This work bridges the gap using market-driven design and decision-based design through quantitative methods. It presents the development and classroom implementation of an agent-based simulation tool that links product attributes and pricing to predicted market outcomes. The simulator was evaluated in an undergraduate design course using student surveys and reflections, showing many students reported meaningful engagement and learning.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Background

Engineering Design Education

Model Development

Course Implementation

Findings and Outcomes

Conclusions

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 Teaching Market-Driven Engineering Design with an Agent-Based Simulation Tool STEVEN HOFFENSON Assistant Professor, School of Systems and Enterprises Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ USA BRENDAN FAY Graduate Student, Systems Engineering Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ USA ABSTRACT In product design, there is often a disconnect between the engineers creating the product and the marketing team determining the best characteristics for the product. The research areas of “design for market systems” and “decision-based design” seek to bridge that disconnect through quantitative approaches that facilitate simultaneous technical design and marketing decisions. However, these marketdriven design frameworks have been primarily evaluated in the context of industry case studies, with limited integration into engineering education. This article presents the development and implementation of a simulation tool for teaching market-driven design in undergraduate engineering design courses. This classroom tool demonstrates the basic relationships between product design decisions, pricing and marketing choices, and predicted market success, by simulating the interactions among producers and consumers in a market system. The product attributes influence the cost and consumer utility of the product, which, along with price, affect market dynamics. The simulator was implemented in a third-year undergraduate design course to introduce the concept of market-driven product design, allowing student design teams to assess the impacts of different design variables on the market success of their design projects. Surveys and written reflections by the students were used to evaluate the simulator’s value in contributing to self-reported learning. The results showed that a majority of students expressed that the simulator provides a meaningful and engaging way to learn about market-driven design concepts. INTRODUCTION Undergraduate engineering courses are increasingly including, if not focusing primarily on, design projects, and engineering students are often required to design, construct, and evaluate a prototype product SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Teaching Market-Driven Engineering Design with an Agent-Based Simulation Tool in a one-semester course. As a result of the demands of such a course, and of engineering curricula in general, engineering students often lose sight of the market needs of their designs, and they rarely are able to optimize their designs with respect to profitability. Instead, students may have a rough concept of product success factors from personal experience, and they make qualitative judgments regarding how the characteristics of a conceptual design will affect its marketability. This qualitative assessment is useful in introducing the concept of market-driven design, but an intuition-based approach varies from student to student and generally falls short of the techniques available within the design research community. This paper proposes and evaluates an approach to use agent-based modeling through a market-driven design simulation tool for engineering classrooms. A market simulator is developed to meet the needs of engineering students who are evaluating how their design projects would perform in a marketplace with competing products and heterogeneous consumers. The consumers in the target market are modeled as “agents” with unique utility functions, and they each choose the product that maximizes their individual utility, which may or may not be the students’ new product. The students are then able to modify their product’s attributes and their pricing strategies in efforts to improve the product’s market share or profits. This simulation is intended to be used to teach students ab

FAQs

Why does market-driven product design matter in engineering education?

Engineering students often focus on building and evaluating prototypes but may lose sight of market needs and profitability optimization. Market-driven design helps connect technical product decisions with marketing and market success.

How does the agent-based simulation tool work?

The tool models consumers as agents with unique utility functions who choose products that maximize their individual utility. Students can adjust product attributes and pricing to improve market share or profits.

How was the simulator evaluated in the classroom?

A third-year undergraduate design course used the simulator to teach market-driven design. Student surveys and written reflections assessed its value, with results indicating that most students found it meaningful and engaging for learning the concepts.

Oct 15, 2026

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