Which research in design creativity and innovation? Let us not forget the reality of companies

Studying design creativity and innovation from practical perspectives for companies requires both a good understanding of the company ecosystem and its inner processes contributing to delivered innovations and a rigorous design research methodology to provide effective design models, methods, platforms that are truly effective in the context of company. Working in an Industrial Engineering laboratory, we advocate a more systemic vision of design creativity and innovation in company ecosystems. We present in this paper an attempt to develop and make professional an innovation engineering. Our research works are illustrated along the different research topics of an innovation process. We start by a recent survey on innovation practice and organizational models led in 28 large companies. The lessons learned about this survey reinforce our belief that there is a need for a new method in agile management of radical innovation projects in company contexts. We currently develop, test and apply such a methodology named: Radical Innovation Design(RID). Its effectiveness has been evaluated through a large scale evaluation of the project outcomes for the company. Two extensions of RID have been proposed and deployed in company contexts: a selection procedure for innovation clusters and a value-driven process for airplane development projects

Adapting the fbs model of designing for usage-driven innovation processes

There has been rising interest in confronting formal models of design with practical design methods, in order to understand better both and to explore how they can improve each other. In this article, we try to map the Radical Innovation Design (RID) methodology in Gero’s Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) framework. We encounter difficulties in doing so, and propose new constructs extending the FBS framework to account for some processes in RID. For instance, FBS is extended to describe the early stages of RID, where usages are analyzed to identify the appropriate situations and problems on which to innovate. We present a short practical case study to illustrate the relevance of these concepts. Our findings join those of others who have investigated the use of FBS to illustrate innovative projects, where requirements are unclear. We propose perspectives for future research, notably pursuing this work with the situated FBS framework.</jats:p

On the integration of engineering design and development process model - Part I: Elaborations on the generally accepted process models

Models of the engineering design process and of the development process nowadays present similar forms in the engineering design literature and interact in a similar way. These models are often presented as generic, in order to be used in a wide area of applications. This interaction is, however, not unproblematic, and in this publication we present some important issues and challenge the generic aspect of these models. In order to increase clarity we have divided the publication into two parts. In Part I, the generally accepted engineering design and development process models are presented. The fundaments of the development model and the motivations behind its current form are highlighted. In Part II, the consequences in the form of severe shortcomings resulting from the interaction of the engineering design and development process models are highlighted. These shortcomings do not disappear when the systematic design process model is applied with alternative development process models. The implications for the further development of methodologies supporting the design and development models are discussed

Using evolutionary design to interactively sketch car silhouettes and stimulate designer's creativity

An Interactive Genetic Algorithm is proposed to progressively sketch the desired side-view of a car profile. It adopts a Fourier decomposition of a 2D profile as the genotype, and proposes a cross-over mechanism. In addition, a formula function of two genes' discrepancies is fitted to the perceived dissimilarity between two car profiles. This similarity index is intensively used, throughout a series of user tests, to highlight the added value of the IGA compared to a systematic car shape exploration, to prove its ability to create superior satisfactory designs and to stimulate designer's creativity. These tests have involved six designers with a design goal defined by a semantic attribute. The results reveal that if "friendly" is diversely interpreted in terms of car shapes, "sportive" denotes a very conventional representation which may be a limitation for shape renewal

ANALYZING RID METHODOLOGY THROUGH THE LENS OF INNOVATIVE ABDUCTION

The literature reports that abduction is inherent to design reasoning. The Radical Innovation Design methodology is analyzed using the lens of Kroll and Koskela's two-step innovative abduction. In the first phase (Problem Setting), the Knowledge Design process follows a two-step selective abduction and the Problem Design process comprises abduction followed by deduction. This illustrates the specific reasoning employed when identifying the right problem on which to innovate. In the second phase (Problem Solving), the reasoning follows two-step innovative abduction

The specificities of radical innovation

In this paper, we investigate a special case of new product development (NDP), that of radical innovation. When a company desires to go outside a current saturated market, it is necessary to offer a new product which is radically different from the competition. If successful, the offering will create a new market that the company can expect to dominate a least for a while until the competition strikes back. A radical NPD has several characteristics that are quite unique and distinct from other types of NPD. This paper aims at making a synthesis of these specificities. From this set of specificities, the ability of the current methodologies to deal with radical innovation is discussed

On the interaction between the engineering design and the development process models - Part II: Shortcomings and limitations

Models of the engineering design process and of the development process nowadays present similar forms in the engineering design literature and interact in a similar way. These models are often presented as generic, in order to be used in a wide area of applications. This interaction is however not unproblematic, and in this publication we present some important issues and challenge the generic aspect of these models. In order to increase clarity, we have divided the publication into two parts. In Part I, the generally accepted engineering design and development process models are presented. The fundaments of the development model and the motivations behind its current form are highlighted. In Part II, the consequences in the form of severe shortcomings resulting from the interaction of the engineering design and development process models are highlighted. These shortcomings do not disappear when the systematic design process model is applied with alternative development process models. The implications for the further development of methodologies supporting design and development models are discussed

Usage-driven problem design for radical innovation in healthcare

While the diffusion and evaluation of healthcare innovations receive a lot of attention, the early design stages are less studied and potential innovators lack methods to identify where new innovations are necessary and to propose concepts relevant to users. To change this, we propose a structured methodology, Radical Innovation Design (RID), which supports designers who want to work on the unstated needs of potential end users in order to create superior value. In this article, the first part of RID is introduced with its two subprocesses: Problem Design and Knowledge Design. In this first period, RID guides innovators to systematically explore users’ problems and evaluate which ones are most pressing in terms of innovation, taking into account existing solutions. The result is an ambition perimeter, composed of a set of value buckets, that is, important usage situations where major problems are experienced and the current solutions provide little or no relief. The methodology then moves on to Solution Design and Business Design (which are not detailed in this article) to address the value buckets identified. With its emphasis on problem exploration, RID differs from methods based on early prototyping. The RID methodology has been validated in various industrial sectors and is well-adapted for healthcare innovation. To exemplify the methodology, we present a case study in dental imagery performed by 10 students in 8 weeks. This example demonstrates how RID favours efficiency in Problem Design and allows designers to explore unaddressed and sometimes undeclared user needs.</jats:p

Reliability based design optimisation for system-in-package

This paper discusses a reliability based optimisation modelling approach demonstrated for the design of a SiP structure integrated by stacking dies one upon the other. In this investigation the focus is on the strategy for handling the uncertainties in the package design inputs and their implementation into the design optimisation modelling framework. The analysis of fhermo-mechanical behaviour of the package is utilised to predict the fatigue life-time of the lead-free board level solder interconnects and warpage of the package under thermal cycling. The SiP characterisation is obtained through the exploitation of Reduced Order Models (ROM) constructed using high fidelity analysis and Design of Experiments (DoE) methods. The design task is to identify the optimal SiP design specification by varying several package input parameters so that a specified target reliability of the solder joints is achieved and in the same time design requirements and package performance criteria are me