Advances in innovation processes are critically important as economic and business landscapes evolve. There are many concept generation techniques that can assist a designer in the initial phases of design. Unfortunately, few studies have examined these techniques that can provide evidence to suggest which techniques should be preferred or how to implement them in an optimal way. This study systematically investigates the underlying factors of four common and well-documented techniques: brainsketching, gallery, 6-3-5, and C-sketch. These techniques are resolved into their key parameters, and a rigorous factorial experiment is performed to understand how the key parameters affect the outcomes of the techniques. The factors chosen for this study with undergraduate mechanical engineers include how concepts are displayed to participants (all are viewed at once or subsets are exchanged between participants, i.e., “rotational viewing”) and the mode used to communicate ideas (written words only, sketches only, or a combination of written words and sketches). Four metrics are used to evaluate the data: quantity, quality, novelty, and variety. The data suggest that rotational viewing of sets of concepts described using sketches combined with words produces more ideas than having all concepts displayed in a “gallery view” form, but a gallery view results in more high quality concepts. These results suggest that a hybrid of methods should be used to maximize the quality and number of ideas. The study also shows that individuals gain a significant number of ideas from their teammates. Ideas, when shared, can foster new idea tracks, more complete layouts, and a diverse synthesis. Finally, as teams develop more concepts, the quality of the concepts improves. This result is a consequence of the team-sharing environment and, in conjunction with the quantity of ideas, validates the effectiveness of group idea generation. This finding suggests a way to go beyond the observation that some forms of brainstorming can actually hurt productivity.
Design-by-analogy is a powerful approach to augment traditional concept generation methods by expanding the set of generated ideas using similarity relationships from solutions to analogous problems. While the concept of design-by-analogy has been known for some time, few actual methods and tools exist to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies from general data sources, databases, or repositories, such as patent databases. A new method for extracting functional analogies from data sources has been developed to provide this capability, here based on a functional basis rather than form or conflict descriptions. Building on past research, we utilize a functional vector space model (VSM) to quantify analogous similarity of an idea's functionality. We quantitatively evaluate the functional similarity between represented design problems and, in this case, patent descriptions of products. We also develop document parsing algorithms to reduce text descriptions of the data sources down to the key functions, for use in the functional similarity analysis and functional vector space modeling. To do this, we apply Zipf's law on word count order reduction to reduce the words within the documents down to the applicable functionally critical terms, thus providing a mapping process for function based search. The reduction of a document into functional analogous words enables the matching to novel ideas that are functionally similar, which can be customized various ways. This approach thereby provides relevant sources of design-byanalogy inspiration. As a verification of the approach, two original design problem case studies illustrate the distance range of analogical solutions that can be extracted. This range extends from very near-field, literal solutions to far-field cross-domain analogies.
Design-by-analogy is a growing field of study and practice, due to its power to augment and extend traditional concept generation methods by expanding the set of generated ideas using similarity relationships from solutions to analogous problems. This paper presents the results of experimentally testing a new method for extracting functional analogies from general data sources, such as patent databases, to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies. In summary, the approach produces significantly improved results on the novelty of solutions generated and no significant change in the total quantity of solutions generated. Computationally, this design-by-analogy facilitation methodology uses a novel functional vector space representation to quantify the functional similarity between represented design problems and, in this case, patent descriptions of products. The mapping of the patents into the functional analogous words enables the generation of functionally relevant novel ideas that can be customized in various ways. Overall, this approach provides functionally relevant novel sources of design-byanalogy inspiration to designers and design teams.
Numerous concept generation methods have been developed that can assist an engineer in the initial phases of design. Unfortunately, limited empirical data is available to guide users in selecting preferred techniques. This study systematically investigates underlying factors of four well-used and documented techniques: Brainsketching, Gallery, 6-3-5, and CSketch. These techniques are resolved into their key parameters and a factorial experiment is performed to understand how the key parameters affect the outcomes of the techniques. The factors chosen for this study include: how ideas are displayed to participants (all are viewed at once or exchanged between participants, "rotational viewing") and the mode used to communicate ideas (written words only, sketches only, or a combination of written words and sketches). This study also provides a method for measuring the quantity of ideas generated when the ideas are represented in the form of both sketches and words.A number of interesting findings are produced from the study. First, the study shows that individuals gain a significant number of ideas from their teammates. Ideas when shared, can foster new idea tracks, more complete layouts, and diverse synthesis. Second, the systematic exchange of a set of ideas between participants produces a greater quantity of ideas than having all ideas displayed in a gallery form. This result shows that techniques like 6-3-5 or C-Sketch, where each person views only a subset of all the team's ideas at any given time, are more likely to produce a larger quantity of ideas than techniques where individuals can continuously view all the ideas the team has generated. Finally, as teams developed ideas, the quality improved. This result is a consequence of the teamsharing environment and, in conjunction with quantity of concepts, validates the effectiveness of group idea generation.
Contemporary products need to evolve to accommodate competitive market pressures, rapid technological change and transient and multi-dimensional customer requirements. Product flexibility is defined as the adaptability of a system in response to these factors. Currently, flexible products are realized with ad hoc methods that rely on the experience and intuition of the designer. In this work, a set of formal principles is presented for guiding the design of flexible products. These principles are derived from the results of an empirical study of the United States patent repository. As part of the study, patents are analyzed with a dissection tool, and representative principles are derived from the data. The utility of these principles is demonstrated via the design of a flexible fuel cell system. The effectiveness of these principles is validated using a Change Modes and Effects Analysis (CMEA) tool to compare the resulting fuel cell concept to a typical device of similar functionality.
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