Design Thinking and Experience Innovation

Abstract

Recently, most industries have seen a rapid advance in commoditization. Amid this trend, this paper aims to review several design based approaches (DBAs) that have drawn attention as new theories of innovation. The paper also aims to highlight the important differences between existing technology push and market pull innovation strategies within the DBA based innovation process.

This paper starts by introducing the semantic turn as a new foundation for design, picking up themes of design thinking and design driven innovation. Four characteristics of the innovation process are presented:

First is the human centered focus of the design process. Second is aiming for experience innovation. Third is distancing oneself from existing users and markets. Fourth is an emphasis on searching for new meaning and experience in the innovation process.

However, while these approaches are very effective for the handful of practitioners capable of using them, for many practitioners, such as SMEs, they are not easy to implement. Concepts, methodologies, and tools need to be developed to assist practitioners in implementing DBA. I have formulated a definition of “design as a plan for guiding users to a new living world,” identifying “experience design” as the key concept for its implementation and proposing an archetype diagram to serve as a useful and easy to use tool for this purpose.