Design Philosophies in Product Innovation

Introduction

In the past few decades, involving the user in the innovation process has been seen as crucial for successful innovation, particularly at the front end of innovation. To this end, many design philosophies have emerged. Their stated aims are to engage the user to better understand their needs and uncover valuable customer insights. The creation of these philosophies was an attempt to better understand the user by building processes around how customer market research should be conducted and analysed. A core pillar was changing the viewpoint of engaging the user from a marketing to a design approach [1]. Three significant design practices emerged: empathic design [2], design thinking [3, 4], and human-centred design [5, 6]. Although these theories have considerable crossover, they all attempt to understand people’s underlying issues and produce solutions to meet people’s wants and needs.

Design

Let's first establish what design means. The term design in this context refers to developing an artefact that meets new needs [7]. Ulrich [8] mentions two historical definitions of design; Kaufman, in 1946, described design as “conceiving and giving form to objects used in everyday life”, and Krippendorff, in 1984, referred to design as “the conscious creation of form to serve human needs”. Ulrich [8] himself defines design as a “human problem-solving activity beginning with a perception of a gap in a user experience, leading and resulting in an artefact.” Thus, product design attempts to create solutions to solve problems [6] by combining both problem-solving methods and cross-functional teams [9].

 

Empathic Design

Empathic design stresses that the key to success is observing the customer using the product to accomplish the job. This approach comes from criticism of the use of surveys, interviews, and questionnaires because the facilitator can introduce bias in the questions or draw biased conclusions from the answers [2]. Furthermore, critical information may be missed “when a customer needs are solicited in writing or through constrained dialogue and pummelled with statistical logic.” [2] Empathic design proposed five phases:

 

1. Observing the customer in their environment.
2. Capturing the data through videos and photographs.
3. Reflecting and analysing the captured data.
4. Creating possible solutions based on the reflections and analysis.
5. Prototyping and evaluation by the customer.
   
   

Empathic design acknowledges that following what the user requests does not lead to innovative ideas, but the user can be a guide to a deep, empathic understanding of customer needs. In this approach, understanding customer needs occurs during brainstorming and is refined through prototyping and evaluation.

 

Human Centred Design

Like empathic design, human-centred design (HCD) emphasises building a deep relationship with the people who use the product to understand their needs [5, 10]. The process consists of three phases:

1. Inspiration phase: The team learns directly from the people using the product through observation.
2. Ideation: The team make sense of the information by creating design concepts and then prototyping and testing these concepts.
3. Implementation phase: Involves the production and release of the final product to the customer.

Veryzer and De Mozota [6] describe HCD as an outside-in method where the users are involved in the design decisions and where technology innovation is secondary. However, HCD has come under increased criticism; they realised that asking users about products and observing them using existing products has led to incremental innovation [11]. Observing existing products will improve the user experience of existing products but will not necessarily lead to radical innovation.

 

‘x’-Centred Design

Along with HCD, you may have come across it’s siblings, user-centred design and customer-centred design [6, 11, 12]. Human-centred design (HCD), user-centred design (UCD), and customer-centred design (CCD) have many similarities in prioritising needs and experiences. However, there are nuanced differences between them.

 

HCD is a broad approach that considers human perspectives, needs, and behaviours in all steps of the design and development process. This approach can be applied not just in product and service design but also in systems and processes, encompassing a wide range of human interactions and experiences. It is holistic, considering not only the product but also how it fits into the broader context of human life and society.

 

UCD is a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end-users are conaidered. UCD can be seen as a subset of HCD, with a more specific focus on the users and their interaction with the product or system. For example, human factors and usability engineering would fall within the scope of UCD.

 

CCD focuses specifically on designing products, services, and experiences that meet the needs and desires of customers, often within the context of commercial transactions. It emphasises understanding the customer's journey, preferences, and the value they seek from a product or service. While CCD shares similarities with UCD in terms of focusing on the end-users experience, its scope includes aspects that influence a customer's decision to purchase and their loyalty, such as emotional engagement and brand perception.

 

In summary, while these approaches emphasise the importance of focusing on the people who interact with products or systems, HCD is the broadest, considering the overall impact on human lives and society. UCD narrows this focus to how users interact with products or systems, aiming to improve usability and user experience. CCD, on the other hand, zeroes in on the customers' experiences and interactions from a commercial perspective, aiming to enhance satisfaction, loyalty, and, ultimately, business outcomes.

 

Design Thinking

Design thinking dates back to a book by Rowe in 1987 [13] and then a paper by Buchanan [3] on ‘Wicked Problems in Design Thinking’, in which Buchanan stated that systematic thinking is required for the exploration of new ideas and that the design profession was ideally placed to tackle this problem. As such, the theory of design thinking has been shown to be grounded in creativity and cognitive theories [14]. Design thinking was further championed by Tim Brown and David Kelley at the IDEO design consultancy [4, 10, 15]. Proponents see the method as primarily a “problem-solving process and not just an innovation process” by bringing design principles, approaches, and methods to problem-solving [16]. This elevated the role of a designer in solving customer problems has become a key element in product innovation [15].

 

The design thinking process has five phases: understand, observe, conceptualise, validate, and implement. Core to design thinking is the intersection between desirability, feasibility and viability [17]:

• Desirability is the customer’s needs.
• Feasibility is the technical likelihood of the product concept being made.
• Viability is the commercial appeal.

Design thinking has undergone an evolution in recent years, transforming into design-led innovation management. By leveraging design tools, the goal is to instil a design culture that drives strategic conversations, innovation and actions [18, 19]—exploring the implementation of design thinking at the organisational level. They used design thinking tools such as interviews, observation and low-def prototyping to uncover user and customer needs. The case study concluded that this is crucial for identifying innovative opportunities.

 

Design thinking continuously focuses on the problem, empathising with the user’s emotional and functional needs.

Comparison of the Design Philosophies

These outside-in design philosophies share similar phases. They all have an observation phase, a problem solution phase, and a prototype phase; refer to Table 1 for a cross reference of the stages. Where they differ is when the design process begins and when it finishes. For example, design thinking transitions from observation directly to brainstorming. Design thinking also introduces an understanding phase before the observation phase, which can be thought of as a problem-finding sub-process [20, 21]. Furthermore, empathic design has two phases for observing and capturing data, whereas human-centred and design thinking combine these into a single observation phase.

 

Table: Comparison of Design Theory Approaches

 

Design-Driven Innovation

In contrast to the outside-in design philosophies discussed above, Verganti presented an inside-out starting point for addressing customer needs [22]. He proposed the Design-Driven Innovation (DDI) model, whereby companies provide new meanings to customers. The DDI model takes the perspective that - if customers cannot identify with new meanings, why bother asking them.

 

DDI focuses on creating radical innovations by redefining the meaning of products rather than merely enhancing their features. It emphasises understanding cultural and societal trends to envision new product concepts that resonate deeply with users. To realise this, companies engage with a network of interpreters—designers, artists, and cultural experts. This approach leads to visionary and disruptive innovations that differentiate businesses in the market by offering unique emotional and symbolic value, fostering a profound connection between products and users.

 

He suggested that “DDI does not start from customer insight”. Instead, it comes from offering “possible breakthrough meanings and product languages that could emerge” [23]. DDI recognises that some successful teams did not engage customers, as their customers could not provide the required information. Instead, companies offer new products, assuming customers would appreciate them and buy them. Though design has moved on from styling and aesthetics to improved functionality and performance, Verganti [23] offered that to be radical, a product should appeal to the latent desires and “emotional and symbolic values” embodied in the term “product meaning”. DDI proposes new sociocultural meanings to potential customers via a finished sellable product.

Conclusion

Empathic design, human-centred design, and design thinking propose that observing customers is the primary method for collecting market research data. On the other hand, DDI suggests that the innovation team already understands the customer's wants and needs. Hence, it advocates not engaging customers but moving directly to the solution phase so that the idea can be tested, as the customer cannot articulate their hidden needs.

 

These methods range from suggesting deep customer engagement to limited engagement. Where a team chooses to sit on the customer engagement/market research spectrum may depend on the type of product being designed and developed.

 

References

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[2]         D. Leonard and J. F. Rayport, "Spark innovation through empathic design," Harvard Business Review, vol. 175, pp. 102-113, 1997, doi: 10.1080/15710882.2011.630472.

[3]         R. Buchanan, "Wicked problems in design thinking," Design Issues, vol. 8, pp. 5-21, 1992, doi: 10.2307/1511637.

[4]         T. Brown, "Design thinking," Harvard Business Review, pp. 85-92, 2008, doi: 10.5437/08956308X5503003.

[5]         IDEO, Human centered design toolkit. IDEO, 2011.

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[7]         H. A. Simon, The sciences of the artificial, 3rd ed. Massachusetts: MIT press, 1996.

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[12]       D. A. Norman, The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. New York: Basic books, 2013.

[13]       K. Dorst, "The core of 'design thinking' and its application," Design Studies, vol. 32, pp. 521-532, 2011, doi: 10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006.

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[22]       R. Verganti, Design driven innovation: changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean. Harvard Business Press, 2009.

[23]       R. Verganti, "Design, meaning, and radical innovation: A metamodel and a research agency," Journal of Product Innovation Management, vol. 15, pp. 436-456, 2008.