Abstract:
This research provides a study of practices of innovative ideation.
The literature highlights the need for more radical innovation as
drivers for customer delight, and more innovative approaches to
understanding customers. However, both the theory and
application, including the resultant practise describe and present a
product-centred approach to innovation as best practise. Using an
Action Research methodology within the Advanced Product Group of
a well known automotive manufacturer; the technical centre of
another well known automotive manufacturer and the industrial
design department of a university, this exploratory and descriptive
study contributes to the understanding and practise of more
innovative approaches to customer driven ideation. Literature
suggests that integrating customer understanding into the earliest
stages of new product development was critical both to its
effectiveness and its ability to innovate. This study, therefore aimed
to investigate innovative ideation by considering two key factors:
1. Its integration into the early stages of the product design and
development process
2. Industrial design practises of customer understanding
The research concluded on Industrial Design practise as well as the
evolving practise of Innovative Ideation.
Industrial designers' participate in ideation processes and practices
in a unique way, not fully represented or accounted for in existing
prescriptions for integrating customer understanding. They require
specific types of information, usually general in nature and
presented visually. Information integrated into these practises is
often substantiated with case study and example-based evidence or
data. The potential to innovate is regarded as the single most
significant motivator for designers to participate in customer
understanding. Paradoxically, designers' processes use and rely
upon 'product' as a focus for innovation and communication of
design integrity. A designer's key role and most significant
contribution, is in creative and strategic thinking:
(new ideas: IDEATION): that is the integration of the actions of idea
generation and the formulation of creative design responses; and
the proposal of new concepts, which place a strong emphasis on
increasing the desirability of 'product experiences' or new
behaviours. This orientation of design considerations and the
questions associated with them are particularly unique to industrial
design disciplines.
They are systems based and holistic in their approach in order to
prioritise customer needs within the design brief. An important early
aspect is the identification of customer attitudes and activities,
which broadens the design considerations.
This study relates these findings to an existing Empathic Design
methodology and Kano's model of delight (1995), as identified best
practice drivers for ideation. This study also concludes that
'Empathic Design' (it's theory, descriptions, definitions and practise)
and product design as a discipline (its profile, uses and practise)
need to evolve in order to embrace customer understanding as a
pathway to innovation.