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DEVELOPING A SMARTER WINDOW
SYSTEM
DISRUPTING DORIC’ S DESIGN APPROACH
DAVID WINSTON
Head of Research & Development, Doric
01 The award winning DN8000 High Performance Multi-Point Locking System.
02 David Winston and the Doric R & D Team.
The term‘ disruptive’ would typically bring to mind thoughts of technology based start-ups situated in Silicon Valley, or the likes of Airbnb and Uber who dramatically displaced the established market leaders by founding a new value network. It would be less likely to think of a traditional industry such as the door and window industry.
Founded in 1972, Doric is the largest privately owned hardware manufacturer in Australia and has a long history of providing innovative door and window hardware for residential, commercial and architectural applications.
In order to explore new markets and move away from the traditional waterfall development approach, Doric explores new ways to create hardware. One of these ways is an approach called design thinking.
At the heart of the design thinking methodology is a human centred design approach which enables holistic product development. Design thinking provides tools that generates customer understanding but also challenges managerial mindsets and processes.
Doric’ s DN8000 multipoint system was the first project undertaken with this new design methodology. Before bringing the Euro groove multipoint technology to Australia, Doric wanted to have a complete understanding of the Australian market in order to identify all stakeholder issues.
These systems create the next level of energy efficient homes, however, research was needed to validate and explore what features were needed to make the product a success.
Mechanical Design Engineer and project team leader, Aritesh Nand, conducted research in four countries in order to identify opportunities to improve the product at each stage of its lifecycle.
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20 Australian Window Association