Abstract
Universal design, as an important concept in product development, has been gradually implemented in various industries and firms, but most of the applications are aimed at the incremental innovation of product design. However, considering the differentiation of product types, the design factors are varied and not precise, which makes it difficult to effectively implement the existing universal-design principles in specific product designs when facing architecturally innovative product development, which leads to an increasing amount of time and resources. This study, with an umbrella stand as an example, proposes to design a new universal-design scale by combining the attributes of the umbrella stand, the existing universal-design principles and the usability principles at the beginning of the design. Then, through interviews and user surveys, cluster analysis is used to screen the products and refine the design factors. In addition, with the Quantification Type I, the universal-design principles and design factors are matched effectively in order to obtain the weight differences of the product design factors and eliminate unsuitable design factors, in order to guide product design. Finally, the universal umbrella-stand-design case is completed for verification. The results show that the universal umbrella stand has been significantly improved in the evaluation of universal-design principles. In the future design, architecturally innovative products with inaccurate design factors can also use this process to complete the design and development of the target product, and to significantly enhance the universal-design evaluation of the product.
Highlights
This study explored the deduction of architecturally innovative product types in universal design (UD)
This study used umbrella stands as the target product for exploring the universality and uniqueness of the current UD scale and principles, and it analyzed the effects of their application on architecturally innovative product types
To conform to the spirit of UD, the UD scale must be adjusted by the product category and the characteristics
Summary
Universal-design thinking is making mainstream products and services more accessible for mainstream users and those with specific requirements, without making special adaptations. This indicates that the UD product market based on the “respect each individual to achieve self-actualization” ideal is rapidly growing [1]. The effects are notable when interventions occur in the early stages of product development [8], such as during product-demand strategy and product-specification planning These results help designers to create systematic designs for efficient and accurate product development [9]. Among the four product-development models, architectural innovation refers to maintaining core design concepts (including a basic knowledge of components) and changing the approaches in order to connect product components for application breakthroughs in architecture, while retaining the original function implementation. Studies are required on the methods of introducing UD into architecturally innovative products
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