Summary:
The objective of this project is to establish a structured conceptual design methodology—Extreme Experience Design (EED)—that stimulates innovation of breakthrough products by engaging designers in extreme experiences as part of concept generation. Extreme experiences expose the designer(s) to modified physical usage environments (e.g., moisture or noise) or altered means of interacting with the product physically, cognitively, or sensorially (e.g., limited dexterity via gloves or limited hearing via earplugs). These experiences are designed to help designers empathize with customers under a variety of conditions, and thereby design for the types of context-related latent needs that lead to breakthrough products. A series of experiments is planned to design and refine the EED methodology, to investigate its effectiveness, and to better understand how a designer’s pre-ideation experiences affect the results of conceptual design. A two-phased Design of Experiments approach will be used to test the effectiveness of the EED methodology. The first phase will be designed to investigate the impact of extreme experiences and designer-prototype interaction—together and separately—on the outcomes of the conceptual design process.  The second phase will be designed to investigate more closely whether different types of extreme experiences lead to different types of innovation.

Collaborator:
Katja Holtta-Otto (UMass-Dartmouth)

Students:
Matthew Saunders

National Science Foundation