Usage-style centered research for creative product design

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present systemic creative product design methods based on usage-style. According to the basic meanings of usage-style, the logical hierarchical structure of usage-style was outlined and established. Combining with product design principle, this work focused on the product values system and product structure system, established the design frameworks of ‘value forming from usage-style’ and ‘structure forming from values by symbols’, presented product creative design ideas and methods, and resented some practical case studies. The results indicated that usage-style includes three levels of operational activity, such as usability, friendliness and desirability. And by analysing different levels of usage-style, designer can achieve physiological and cognitive ability of user, comfortable and conventional usage values, psychological and emotional values, cultural and aesthetic values, and can achieve some design ideals, such as functional design, barrier-free design, universal design, personal and emotional design, and cultural and aesthetic design. These design ideals can make design origin change from product or market to usage-style and make products meet the reasonable multiplex usage-styles of users' expectation.