Developing an Ideation Method for Emotive Form Design of Products

The product design process comprises creation of a range of sketches and forms during its ideation phase. The contemporary design industry (especially start-ups) relies heavily on designer’s creative form generation ability. However, design students, as well as practitioners, often face a cognitive barrier in terms of creating novel and innovative form options. Consequently, designers turn towards traditional idea generation techniques, such as brainstorming, to overcome this mental barrier. Although the conventional idea generation techniques have always assisted designers in dealing with design challenges, what is not paid enough attention in these design methods is the complications of contemporary design concerns and modern-day consumer expectations. Modern-day consumers expect functionality and usability to be fundamentally existent in the product, and their search has moved towards satisfaction of higher-order needs, i.e. emotional needs. Therefore, designers must aim to create product forms that appeal to the consumers at their emotional level. In this regard, we review the literature specific to the context of emotive form generation methods and propose an innovative form ideation technique for product designers. The proposed tool was devised based on the principle of design-by-analogy, where two diverse domains are compared to form new connections and gain fresh insights. The proposed ideation technique can serve as a tool in emotive form generation when designers confront the ‘blank page’ while developing a new product. It will also provide fresh opportunities to expand the range of product forms that they create.