Innovation-supporting tools for novice designers: Converting existing artifacts and transforming new concepts

Abstract

Generating a range of concepts is often a significant challenge for novice designers given their limited design experience and domain knowledge. This article develops a tool to support novice designers in formulating a design strategy for converting existing artifacts or mechanical objects into abstract representations. The app-based tool is aimed at supporting novice designers in (1) archiving existing artifacts, (2) converting artifacts into abstract representations for divergent activities, and (3) observing the kinematic movements of three-dimensional mechanical objects through augmented reality. An experiment conducted in 2014 investigated how the tool’s augmented reality function and the proposed strategy supported novice designers. A total of 13 second-year industrial design students generated 88 separate ideas. From 12 possible mechanical movements, four participants generated between 11 and 22 ideas each, while another five participants generated 1 or 2 ideas each. Each participant successfully proposed a concept that adapted the selected mechanism in response to a given problem in a given environment. Comparing pre- and posttest scores of each participant, 11 of 13 participants improved their knowledge of kinematic mechanisms. The results suggested that the use of the proposed tool and strategy has potential to help some novice designers explore new concepts and acquire related design knowledge.