Abstract
ABSTRACTThe relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the development of creativity is always a controversial topic. However, it has seldom been explored from the user-centered design (UCD) perspective. This paper describes how the UCD approach has been employed to develop Design Patent Retrieval Application (acronym: DsPLAi), a mobile app aimed to integrate IPRs related information into early design processes to enhance designers’ IP practice and to facilitate the creative process. Interview studies were first conducted to identify end-users’ understanding of IPRs and related practices. Next, participatory design workshops with designers and IP processionals were organized to understand the interaction between the two parties and their needs, thereby deriving requirements for DsPLAi. A prototype of the app was developed and evaluated with ten industrial designers. The prototype received positive feedback in the usability evaluation. The empirical results showed that the provision of IPRs related information at an early stage could be helpful to the design process and that the designers were positive about the use of DsPLAi in their daily design routines.
Highlights
What is intellectual property (IP)? IP is defined as non-physical property whose value is based upon an idea or ideas (Hughes, 1988)
The term “creative industry” (CI) is a board concept which covers a wide range of activities such as industrial design, architecture, and advertising, and at the same time implies the necessity that a product/service contains a substantial artistic/creative element (UNESCO, 2006)
Discussions: the dialogues between the designers and the IP professionals were categorised into four themes: (i) IP-protection, which stands for the conversation on IP relevant information, such as IP policies, IP news, etc; (ii) Search-strategy, which stands for discussions on the strategy to be employed in the relevant patent retrieval, most of which are about the keywords to use; (iii) Search-result, which stands for the discussion of the results found by the IP professional; and (iv) Design-idea, which represents the conversation on the design ideas worked on by the designer
Summary
What is intellectual property (IP)? IP is defined as non-physical property whose value is based upon an idea or ideas (Hughes, 1988). Instead of examining the role of IPRs in the society or creative industries from a macroscopic perspective, this research focused on its influence on individual inventors or designers. With creativity as the core value, the development of CIs is heavily influenced by the level of protection offered by IPRs. Previous studies suggest that IPRs are both an internal asset and an external force to Cis (Towse, 2010). For European countries, a recent survey shows that the general public’s understanding of IP has increased Such an understanding has decreased for the younger generations, and in general, the concept of IPRs is considered to be somewhat abstract by many (Berland, 2013). Considering the typical role of China in the domain of IP and its reference significance for countries with similar progress in IP development, the current paper chose China as the location where all the data collection studies took place
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