Discussion 114

The tests demonstrated the capability of the discussed tool to help identifying new product attributes, features and ideas also for people with a great orientation towards the industrial world. The articulated testing campaign has revealed the capability of the tool to:

• foster the generation of new product attributes, by drastically augmenting their number if compared to intuitive strategies (effective support in the individuation

of latent needs, reliability of the approach);

• increase the degree of novelty of new product ideas (effective support in the

individuation of latent needs, reliability of the approach);

• increase the variety of generated ideas, highlight how users have been able to widely explore the design space (effective support in the individuation of latent

needs, reliability of the approach);

• be usable in multiple industrial domains (reliability of the approach);

• provide a support for industrial players both for mature systems (such as household ovens and door handle) and innovative products (such wearable HCI artefacts) developed through long-lasting and accurate design processes (reliability of the approach);

• be quicker than commonly used approaches, considering the same number of generated ideas (quickness and easiness of the method/tool)

• generate a detailed framework of existing competing factors, besides supporting the generation of new ideas. This side result could be exploited when requiring to perform benchmark activities or to carry out innovation initiatives swivelled on the enhancement of current product attributes;

• represent a support in the field of designing Product-Service Systems (see Test 3).

The first three points of the above bulleted list represent fundamental criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of idea generation techniques. However, additional metrics could be used in future tests to assess the tool through judgements provided by a representative sample of experts (Kaufman et al. 2007):

• quality of ideas: it is related to the technical feasibility of proposed ideas (Shah et al. 2003) and allows understanding how many ideas could be actually implemented in new products;

• creativity of ideas: it is related to the ability of generating novel and valuable ideas. It can be assessed analysing together novelty and usefulness of generated ideas (Sarkar and Chakrabarti 2011).

The application of the developed methodology in real industrial cases shows how the proposed approach has qualitatively overcome the performances of common Product Planning practices. If compared with the time and human resources dedicated to idea generation, the employment of the methodology results a brief task, also thanks to the presence of iDea software prototype. Whereas industrial practitioners would not be inclined to modify their established approach to Product Planning, the exploitation of the developed tool would not however result in a significant loss of time (if the common duration of NPD cycles is considered). In another perspective, the described instrument can be seen as a support for Brainstorming sessions, whose idea stimulation is fostered by the systematic way of exploring potential benefits for users and stakeholders.

With respect to the number of generated ideas, the quantities of new attributes emerging from Test 2 and the other two industrial experiments clearly differ. Very diverging outcomes concern also the pace of generating new ideas by using the three modules, as highlighted in Table 5.8 that compares the second and third tests (time in Test 4 has not been recorded). Whereas standard and detailed modules show the best generation frequency in the second experiment, the quick combination strategy results the most prolific within the third test. These varying results do not allow individuating a most suitable matching mode and, hence, additional tests are required to fine-tune the combination procedures.

Experiment 2 Experiment 3

Quick module 20 minutes 6 minutes

Standard module 3 minutes 20 minutes

Detailed module 5 minutes 39 minutes

Overall 5 minutes 20 minutes

Table 5.8 approximate average time elapsed to stimulate new ideas with the proposed matching modes

The main weakness of the developed tool, as revealed by testers, stands in the possibility of provoking a sense of boredom by submitting the user to a very large number of stimuli. According to their comments, this bad feeling is tolerated whereas the motivation in employing the instrument is high, but drops of attention can likely occur also in these cases. This aspect partially conflicts with the effort paid to increase individuals’ workload. In this sense, some hypothesized measures include the improvement of the interface of the software by benefitting of studies in the field of HCI.

Eventually, despite the manifold outcomes provided by the tests a complete validation activity is still required. It would consist in the exploitation of the emerged value drivers, their industrial implementation and the verification of the success of the so designed innovative products. Hence, such a validation should require long times before observing market results, clearly incompatible with the divulgation of the findings.

Besides above mentioned future development of the tool and possible tests to assess its effectiveness, open issues that could be analysed in future researches concern:

• usability of the instrument by research teams and/or customers instead of individuals;

• the dependence of the results from individual skills; • the capability to support more or less creative people.