Setting the stage for developing innovative product concepts: people and climate

Abstract

When developing a successor of an existing product, it is relatively easy to involve consumers at the early stages of the process-one could, for example, observe them using the current products, and discuss with them what could be improved. However, when creating novel products from 'scratch', consumers might find it difficult to articulate future needs, to appreciate the potential and limitations of new technologies, or think about possible applications. So, consumer co-creation in the early creative phase does not seem to be feasible. Other approaches to include the consumer perspective need to be considered. Furthermore, product innovation is increasingly about how to create an appealing and alluring experience, bringing further challenges to the innovation process. A promising approach seems to be bringing together domain experts from different backgrounds, creating a setting in which barriers between disciplines can disappear, and adopting a user-centric, rapid iterative investigation, ideation, prototyping and development process.

ExperienceLabs

“…Since a thorough understanding of what makes a product experience successful and appealing, is work in progress (to which conferences such as DPPI definitely contribute), and a detailed appreciation of which steps should be adopted to systematically develop products that meet these goals, is lacking at the moment (Hoonhout, 2007), facilities such as our ExperienceLabs are very important, to conduct studies in user experiences, and collect more insights. Experience testing of concepts is an important activity for which HomeLab is being used.…”

“…Of course, these facilities need to be complemented by adequate methodologies for studying consumer responses to innovations in the various development and evaluation phases. And preferably, project teams are multi-disciplinary -including psychologists, other behavioural scientists, design experts, and technology experts (Hoonhout, 2007).…”

Interactions in collaborative prototyping for early design development in pediatric medications safety

“…For example, Sanders & Stappers (2008) advocate co-design practices with collaboration between designers and non-designers, where non-designers include both researchers and users. Today, many design research consultancies bring together interdisciplinary teams of researchers and designers to develop in-depth knowledge and understanding of user needs in an effort to generate innovative product or system solutions (Sanders, 2008;Hoonhout, 2007;etc. ).…”

“…Philips design research experience. In his article for CoDesign, Hoonhout (2007) appears to differentiate between interdisciplinary design development at the front-end and co-design or participatory approaches at the front-end, excluding users from the interdisciplinary context. Experience at Phillips suggests that co-creation with consumers (end users) in the early creative phase of new product development does not seem feasible because the process of conceptualizing needs and uses for new or underdeveloped technologies may be too abstract for the average consumer to grasp (p. 22).…”

“…40 A schematic of the research activities is presented in Figure 2, and the remainder of this section describes each activity in detail. The protocol was developed in the context of literature on brainstorming and group creativity (Paulus & Nijstad, 2003;Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp & Gilson, 2008;Argote, Gruenfeld & Naquin, 2001), co-design (Hoonhout, 2007;Sanders & Stappers, 2008;Vink, Imada & Zink, 2008;Westerlund, 2007), and collaborative prototyping Müller, 1992;Bodker & Gronboek, 1996). The following variables were identified and considered during protocol development: demographics of the group (participating disciplines, experience of participants, number of participants), duration, location and materials, description of the problem/challenge provided to participants, and the number of small groups observed.…”