The beginning stages of a project are always the most critical and research focused. It is viewed as the hardest section out of the nine design controls because you only have an idea of what you want. It is crucial to figure out within this stage:

Who you are marketing to?
What characters of your product fill a market gap?
Figuring out the major and minor milestones needed to create your project by a set deadline
Organizing weekly meetings with your project team
Distributing responsibilities to your project team members
Market research is required to determine if your idea can become commercial. You do not want to go ahead and start on a project then midway find out that some other company already created your design. Once you determine your market gap and mold your project around that then you know which audience to target. Once all of this information is gathered you can meet with your company and sell your idea. Within capstone many students had an idea for a project and met with companies to get funding. Companies want to know if your product fits into their business strategy and if so how is it different from current commercialized products.