Abstract
Design heuristics (DHS) as a tool can help boost designers’ creativity in early conceptual design phases. We have developed a set of DHS for digital innovation (DHS10). There are numerous studies on DHS impacts/outcomes in the recent years. However, little research has been conducted to identify whether DHS has lasting benefits on designers’ ideation performance. This paper explores whether DHS10 can help designers achieve more creative ideas based on different design briefs, and if DHS has lasting impacts on or benefits for students. An empirical study was conducted with two groups (i.e., 32 students who learned DHS10 five weeks ago, and 24 students who studied DHS10 instantly). They were asked to address an open-ended design brief on COVID-19 and generate as many innovative ideas as possible. The results suggest DHS has impacts on students who learned DHS just now and five weeks ago. The effect is stronger on those who just learned DHS10. We suggest that DHS10 be provided for ideation as it provides texts and visual stimuli for designers. DHS10 also has the potential to help students understand digital innovation and generate ideas accordingly.
Highlights
Manufacturing firms must adapt to digital transformation to ensure long-term survival [1]
This study aimed to explore whether DHS10 can generate more novel ideas when facing emerging societal challenges such as COVID-19 and to evaluate lasting and shortterm impacts of Design heuristics (DHS)
Our study suggests that DHS10 can be employed as a new ideation tool to support design students and potentially practitioners in the generation of greater numbers of more innovative and diverse concepts for digital innovation, with reduced design fixation [19,20]
Summary
Manufacturing firms must adapt to digital transformation to ensure long-term survival [1]. Technical advances have triggered an opportunity for design innovation to generate a wealth of new products [15] but few DHS have been created for the digital era. ICT and innovation have crucial impacts on economic growth [16]. To fill this gap, we extracted 10 design heuristics (DHS10) for digital innovation by systematically studying. A common technique for commercial ideation is team brainstorming [28] or its variants such as ‘brainwriting’ (e.g., developing a large quantity of ideas). This technique is not without its limitations [29]
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