This first stage of product development is required to capture both the technical and commercial goals of the project.

This stage is interactive and requires a high level of communication and participation on behalf of PDE and the client.  The results of this phase is a document known as the Design Brief that contains carefully constructed customer need statements, organized in a hierarchical list with importance weightings for each need.

The design brief also contains the following information:

• Description of the product, including key customer benefits.
• Key business goals, including introduction timing, market share and desired financial performance. 
• Target markets for the product.
• Assumptions that may constrain the development effort.
• Stakeholders and their requirements that need to be included or considered in the development process.