A creativity-based design process for innovative product design

In today's highly competitive and uncertain market environment with short product life cycles, product development must not only satisfy the quality and speed of production, but it must ensure that products themselves have included innovative values. As creativity plays an important role in new product development (NPD), it can be utilized in search of novel ideas for innovative product design, and also can be regarded as a helpful tool in advancing NPD output. In this paper, we developed a creativity method based on the naturally sensuous ability of human beings. We also proposed a creativity-based design process integrating some systematic design methodologies with a developed creativity tool. The essence of this proposed design process is not the sole performance of the creativity tool but the coherent efforts among each involved process technique. To prove the practicability of this design process, a case study was conducted according to various procedures that were followed. By applying evolutionary thinking, the sensuous association method, and other systematic approaches to the design process. a number of concept solutions were produced. An optimal solution was then determined by using an operative decision-making model based on the weighted generalized mean method. Relevance to industry Rebuilding a product design process (PDP) with creativity techniques can effectively assist designers in encouraging design creativity, further improving the overall performance of innovative product design. Accordingly, this research provides a new approach to the design process for industries by taking advantage of a creativity-based design process to achieve the goals of innovative product design. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.