Understanding the Role of Additive Manufacturing Knowledge in Stimulating Design Innovation for Novice Designers

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is recognized as a disruptive technology that offers significant potentials for innovative design. Prior experimental studies have revealed that novice designers provided with AM knowledge (AMK) resources can generate a higher quantity and quality of solutions in contrast with the control groups. However, these studies have adopted general evaluation metrics that fall short in correlating AMK with radical or architectural innovation. This deficiency directly affects how AMK should be captured, modeled, and delivered so that novel opportunities may be more efficiently utilized in the ideation stage. To refine the understanding of AMK’s role in stimulating design innovation, an experimental study is conducted with two design projects: (a) a mixer design project, and (b) a hairdryer redesign project. The former of which aims to discover whether AMK inspiration increases the quantity and novelty of working principles (i.e. radical innovation), while the latter examines the influence of AMK on layout and feature novelty (i.e. architectural innovation). The experimental study indicates that AMK does have a positive influence on architectural innovation, but the effects on radical innovation are very limited if the provided AMK is functionally irrelevant to the design problems. Two strategies are proposed to aid the ideation process in maximizing the possibility of identifying AM potentials which facilitate radical innovation. The limitations of this study and future research plans are also discussed.