Influences of Design Tools on Concepts Generation
DS 73-1 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity Volume 1
Year: 2012
Editor: Duffy, A.; Nagai, Y.; Taura, T.
Author: Annamalai Vasantha, G.V.; Chakrabarti, A.; Corney, J.
Section: Design Process
Page(s): 127-136
Abstract
Concept generation plays a vital role in establishing a broader foundation in the design process to create novel products. In globalized, collaborative, designing scenario, unambiguous representation of captured ideas to explicate designer‘s thoughts is important in sharing and reuse of concepts. Various design studies noted the impact of design tools on concept generation. However, the results did not detail the influences of variety of tools in representation and reinterpretation of concepts through captured design documents. This paper aims to understand the influences of conceptual design tools: Mobile e-Notes TakerTM, WacomTM Tablet, and Computer with RhinocerosTM CAD on concept representation and reinterpretation, during original and redesign phases. Analyses of six individual designers‘ using video protocol studies conducted in original and redesign phases reveal that the design tools had significant impact on concept generation, in terms of the number of concepts generated and the textual and graphical representation of the design elements.
Keywords: concept generation, design tools, representation, reinterpretation