Designing future products: what difficulties do designers encounter and how can their creative process be supported?

Abstract

To remain competitive, companies must regularly offer new products to consumers. A major challenge for designers is therefore to come up with design solutions and define products that are both new and adapted to future users and usages. Although classic methods and ergonomic recommendations are useful in most run-of-the-mill design contexts, they are of limited benefit when the design situation requires greater creativity. This paper therefore addresses issues related to product design by pursuing a triple objective: (1) highlight the difficulties encountered by designers in imagining and conceiving new products, (2) find out which conditions could help designers come up with creative ideas for innovative products, and (3) suggest methods and tools to support designers' creative process and help them take other stakeholders' needs and expectations into consideration.

Immersive Virtual Environments’ Impact on Individual and Collective Creativity

“…Creativity and innovation professionals use diverse creativity techniques and strategies to come up with creative design solutions or products that are original and, at the same time, satisfy constraints pertaining to the design problem at hand (Bonnardel, 2012; Bonnardel & Pichot, 2020; Bourgeois-Bougrine et al, 2017). VR offers a cost-effective means of implementing and optimizing nearly all conventional individual and collaborative creativity enhancement techniques while also offering potent new possibilities and combinations not available by other means (Thornhill-Miller & Dupont, 2016).…”

Ordinary users, precursory users and experts in the anticipation of future needs: Evaluation of their contribution in the elaboration of new needs in energy for housing

“…As an initial phase of a design project, the need's analysis and anticipation is considered as a design activity for which we seek needs that are novel and adapted to the future context (Bonnardel, 2012;Bonnardel & Pichot, 2020), specifically in the context of prospective ergonomics (Brangier & Robert, 2014;Robert & Brangier, 2012). In other words, we are looking for ideas of needs that are creative, that is to say which are new, relevant and realistic.…”

Technologies for Supporting Creativity in Design: A View of Physical and Virtual Environments with Regard to Cognitive and Social Processes

“…Several studies have been performed on both professional designers and students in design to analyse cognitive processes involved in individual design situations (e.g., Bonnardel, 2000;Bonnardel, 2012aBonnardel, , 2012bBonnardel & Bouchard, 2017;Bonnardel & Gero, 2021;Bouchard, Camous, & Aoussat, 2005;Gero, 2000;Gero & Bonnardel, 2005;Suwa, Gero, & Purcell, 1998;Visser, 1994). This understanding has also been used to develop technologies that aim to favour creativity in design (see, for instance, Bonnardel & Zenasni, 2010).…”

“…Moreover, concomitantly to the definition and redefinition of the design problem, designers have to generate ideas and to evaluate them in order to progressively choose one or more idea(s) they consider relevant to be developed. The main difficulties consist in reaching ideas that are both new and adapted to the design problem at hand (see, for instance, Bonnardel, 2012a). In particular, several studies (e.g., Chrysikou & Weisberg, 2005;Jansson & Smith, 1991) showed a robust effect called 'design fixation', which leads designers to reproduce design solutions they already know or to conform to examples provided to them, which goes against reaching creative ideas.…”