Methods And The Process Model Study Of Functional Innovative Design For New Product Development

When it comes to functional design, vague original definition, many uncertain factors, too many degrees of freedom and no unified model or process at present are common problems. However, design methods are getting more and more attention. Common methods for functional design are empirical design, QFD, experience design, brainstorm, etc. Although these methods are widely used and can solve lots of problems effectively, there are still some shortages and limitations, which are as follows: Firstly, empirical design mainly replies on designers' personal experience and inspiration. Secondly, QFD takes no innovative factor into consideration when house of quality is transformed from demands to functions. Thirdly, experience design can hardly acquire customers' experience accurately. Finally, divergent thinking and random thinking are hard to converge and control when brainstorming. Additionally, traditional functional design mainly relies on personal thinking and experience and pays little attention to discovering customers' demands, making use of and sidestepping patents or any other aspects, which leads to low effectiveness of functional innovative design.To solve problems of the functional design methods above and improve customers' satisfaction of products, some work had been done as follows: Firstly, a functional design method based KANO model was proposed by extracting some contents from KANO model. Secondly, By analyzing problems of acquiring customers' personal experiences and feelings, a functional design method that made designers experience the using process of products together with customers was proposed. Thirdly, MPV of benchmarking was applied to evaluate products' functions, and features and products' functions were associated with each other, and finally a functional design method based on Benchmarking and Feature Transfer was proposed. Based on the work above, a process model for new product functional design was constructed.(1) Three functional innovative design method was extracted. The functi onal design method, based KANO model, guides designers to analyze demands from different layers of customers, and helps the innovative design of the main function from the angle of acquiring customers' charismatic demands and one dimensional demands. The method, based on personal experience design, leads designers to conduct innovative design for new product by paying more attention to customers' personal experiences and feelings and personalized design. The method, based on Benchmarking and Feature Transfer of TRIZ, helps designers transfer functions from existed products to the new developing product quickly and complete the functional design for new product.(2) The innovative functional design process model for new product was built. The model includes demands analysis, patents analysis, TRIZ tools and functional decomposition. According to rigorous logical relationship, the presented method based on KANO model was applied to main functional design process for new product development, the method based on personal experience design was applied to auxiliary design process, and the method based on Benchmarking and Feature Transfer of TRIZ was applied to detailed functional design process. The process model has an orderly cycle with obvious structural layers and detailed steps.(3) A design case was conducted. The case of racing bicycle design has proved that the proposed product functional design methods and its process model can effectively avoid relying on experience and intuition too much during functional design process for new product. The proposed method and its process model can make a orderly and controllable design process and an obvious innovative result.