Abstract
Generation of new concepts in product design process serves as driving force of innovation. While many methods have been proposed for supporting design concept generation, it has rarely been supported in a systematic way, because its process is done in designer's implicit thought, and therefore, it is difficult to explicitly formalize the process. This paper proposes a model of designers' thinking process in concept generation called ECF cycle. It consists of three steps, i.e., (1) Externalization: the step for representing design concepts with drawings and language, (2) Classification: the step for classifying concepts with function trees, and (3) Finding voids: the step for finding potentials of new concepts called void, which is a defect of the classification. Then, this research builds a new method of concept generation incorporating the theory of solving inventive problems (TRIZ). The method is based on a quick reference table of TRIZ principles, which helps designers to create a new concept corresponding to a void found by ECF cycle. A case study of concept generation of new running shoes is demonstrated in order to verify the ability of the proposed method.
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