Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 09, 2018 - September 12, 2018
In contemporary manufacturing, it is necessary to design innovative products continuously. Thus, a methodology to create innovative product ideas is proposed. It can be used to create product ideas by synthesizing a product and a situation that is different from the situation in which the product is conventionally used. The design methodology, by focusing on situations, was systemized from a relationship between products, functions, and situations. In order to investigate the effectiveness of the design methodology by focusing on situations, an experiment in which the subjects create new product ideas was conducted. The subjects were divided into two group: an experimental group was given situations, and a control group was not given situations in advance. Then, the subjects thought of an existing product's function and created new product ideas. The ideas were evaluated preliminarily from the viewpoints of originality and practicality. In the evaluation, product ideas created by both groups were evaluated higher than 0. This suggests the effectiveness of the methodology. The fact that the value of practicality of the product ideas created by the experimental group was higher than the one of the control group might imply that the situation in which product will be used was imagined more concretely. On the other hand, the value of originality was lower than for the control group, indicating that the expansion of the thought space was inhibited in the case of focusing on situations.
