The effects of explicit alternative generation

The Effects of Explicit Alternative Generation Techniques in Consumer Product Design Fabio Campos, Marcelo Soares, Walter Correia, Remo Ferreira, Eliana Melo, Arlindo Correia UFPE – IFET-PE – Capes – CNPq

ABSTRACT Every product design implies in a step of alternatives generation where creativity is employed. Creativity is one of the more active skills of the human beings; by it is possible to solve ergonomic problems and develop innovative ideas. The techniques able for exercising the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for symbolic thinking and creativity, can be used in an “ad hoc” or “explicit” way. This paper presents evidence about the efficiency of their “explicit” use when compared to the “ad hoc” one, and also about which conditions can impact and be impacted in this use. Keywords: Product design, alternative generation techniques, design methods, creativity

INTRODUCTION Consumer Product Design, as any kind of product design, involves at least 5 steps: data gathering, alternative generation-selection, implementation-prototyping and alternative evaluation. These steps are neither necessarily done in sequence nor used only once along the design process (Bürdek, 2006). According to Cushman and Rosenberg, the ergonomists should be involved in activities which pervade all these 5 steps such as allocation of functions and tasks, task analysis, identification of user interface requirements, development of technical specifications, preliminary and detailed design, and limited user testing with muckups (Cushman and Rosenberg, 1991). By other perspective, the act of solving ergonomic questions about the design of a consumer product can, itself, makes use of alternative generation techniques. All the diverse design branches (graphic design, product design, service design, etc.) necessarily make use of these steps, but do this in a continuum ranging from all steps made intuitively (in an “ad hoc” way) (Melo et al, 2006) to all steps made explicitly (“explicitly” in the sense of being done by means of a formal, clear, technique, and not by non-structured ways). For example, a designer may choose not to gather additional information about a particular product to be designed, if he works all the time with this kind of product and feels that he already has enough data. Good designs are often associated with innovative or creative solutions (Baxter, 2000), and the “insights” for theses creative solutions happen during the step of alternative generation, the main focus of this paper. Although the alternative generation techniques are around for about 100 years and one intuitively knows that the use of some technique tends to be able to produce better results (Alves, Campos and Neves, 2007), they are not widely used by designers. This paper presents evidence that the explicit use of these techniques can produce better alternatives for consumer product designs than an “ad hoc” alternative generation step, and explore some conditions where these better results occur. Two experiments were done to try to elucidate these questions. In the first one the alternative generation with and without the use of explicit techniques are compared. In the second experiment, the results of the application of the explicit techniques by veteran designers are tested. The conclusions of both experiments generate evidence in favor of the use of explicit techniques to increase the quantity of useful alternatives generated and quality of consumer products designs.

EXPERIMENT I – WITH X WITHOUT TECHNIQUES The aim of this experiment was to investigate if it is possible to note some advantage with the use of explicit techniques for alternatives generation versus

alternatives generated without any structured technique. Sixty people from five diverse educational backgrounds (Graphic Design, Environmental Management, Civil Engineering, Radiology and Tourism) were chosen at random and divided in a control group (which used no technique) and a “technique group” (using the explicit technique) from each background, therefore resulting in 10 groups (a control group and a technique group from each background) each one with 6 people (Bomfim, 1995). None of these 10 groups communicated with the others during the experiment. The same briefing was delivered to each group, but to the “technique groups” were taught previously the “Brainwriting” technique (Warfield, 1994). All groups had the same time to develop their alternatives, 30 min (Bomfim, 1995). To evaluate the generated alternatives a specialist in the field of the briefing (game design) was hired, and the “De Bono Scale” employed (De Bono, 1997). The “De Bono Scale” categorizes the alternatives in several groups, which are in diminishing order of importance or usefulness: “Idea directly usable” (IDU), “Good idea but not to us” (GBN), “Good Idea but not now” (GNN), “Should be improved” (SBI), “Strong but not usable” (SBU), “Interesting but not usable” (INU), “Little value” (LV), and “Unusable” (U). The alternatives were shuffled before the evaluation thus the specialist did not know from which group were the alternatives. The results of each group and the final result of all groups summed up were plotted in bar-graphs (figures 1 to 6).

FIGURE 1 Results from the “Graphic Designers” group. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 2 Results from the “Radiology” group. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 3 Results from the “Civil Engineering” group. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 4 Results from the “Tourism” group. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 5 Results from the “Environmental Management” group. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 6 Results from all groups summed up. (Font: authors)

Even without further statistical elaboration, the graphs make clear the effects of the explicit techniques use. Some conclusions can be drawn from these figures: • In a real world design process, the set of “Ideas directly usable”, IDUs, would be the most valuable one, regarding the conception of an actual product or the solution of a real-world problem. In Figure 1, Results from the “Graphic Designers” group, there is the double of IDUs coming from the team that used the explicit techniques. • Comparing the results from the graph at Figure 1, with the results from the others ones, it is relevant to observe that it was, among the “educational backgrounds”, the one able to generate more IDUs by the control group, evidencing a possible effect of the educational background in the “spontaneous” creativity. • All the graphs (figures 1 to 6) shows that the use of explicit techniques

result in more IDUs than without. In the less favorable case for their use, the Graphic Designers group, Figure 1, was generated the double of IDUs; and the total results from all groups evaluated, Figure 6, shows more than 4 times IDUs using the techniques.

EXPERIMENT II – VETERAN DESIGNERS In Experiment I people were chosen at random regarding their professional experience. In this experiment the “Graphic Design group” (vide Figure 1) exhibited the better result in the quantity of IDUs generated, thus Experiment II was devised to further explore this fact. The main aim of Experiment II was to evolve the investigation to test the effect of the techniques with professional, veteran, designers. The idea now was to evaluate not the quantity of IDUs anymore, but the quality of consumer product concepts generated by these veteran designers. Four groups of 6 veteran designers with relevant professional experience were chosen based in a previous analysis of their portfolio. A scale of creative product evaluation, CPSS (Creative Product Semantic Scale) (O'Quin and Besemer, 2006), was used along with an evaluation method, CPAM (Creative Product Analysis Matrix) (Besemer and Treffinger, 1981), were used by a panel of 3 specialists to evaluate the concepts. From this evaluation model we plotted the results of the opinions regarding how much the concepts of the products rated as being: surprising, original, logical, useful, worthy, and comprehensive. Three briefings for diverse products were delivered to each group. One of the groups, the “Control Group”, generated the product concepts to these 3 briefings in an “ad hoc” way. The other 3 “Technique Groups” worked upon these briefings using three different techniques: brainstorming, brainwriting and provocation (Bomfim, 1995). A combination was made where each of the 3 “technique groups” worked upon a briefing with a different technique to try to equalize the specific differences among the teams. All these concepts of consumer products were shuffled and then evaluated by the panel of specialists, without any communication among them. The results of these evaluations were plotted and their bar-graphs shown in figures 7 to 10.

FIGURE 7 Veteran Designers with and without using the Brainstorming Technique. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 8 Veteran Designers with and without using the Provocation Technique. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 9 Veteran Designers with and without using the Brainwriting Technique. (Font: authors)

FIGURE 10 Veteran Designers – comparison among all techniques and the control group. (Font: authors)

Analyzing these graphs and taking in account the “Experiment I” it is possible to drawn some additional conclusions: • It is possible to detect better qualities in the consumer products concepts generated with the use of explicit techniques. • The use of the explicit techniques enhance both the quantity and quality of the alternatives generated and also the qualities of the products concepts. • Even veteran designers can have benefits in the qualities of their designs using the explicit techniques. • Some techniques, like “provocation” in Experiment II, Figure 8, can exhibit consistent better results than others even with different briefings and teams. The experiments done were not enough to identify which conditions interfere or cause this behavior. • Some qualities of the consumer product concepts generated can be more improved by the use of the explicit techniques than others, for example, as

can be observed in figures 7 to 9, it is possible to get a high degree of the “surprising” quality even without the use of the explicit techniques. The same behavior cannot be observed with the “useful” and “comprehensive” qualities, for example, in which the use of explicit techniques excel, in all techniques (figures 7 to 9).

CONCLUSIONS The two experiments provided evidence in favor of the use of explicit techniques to generate consumer product concepts. Both the number of useful alternatives of design and the qualities of the design concepts are enhanced with the explicit techniques use. Even veteran designers can create better designs concepts using them. Although the experiments produced strong evidence in favor of the use of explicit techniques, they also elicited some questions to be investigated like which conditions make a technique have better performance over others, and which conditions, besides the educational background, interfere with the creative potential.

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