What Is the Definition of Generate Concepts
Concept creation is the first and most important step in creating a great product. Product developers need to explore the idea, ask the right questions, and provide valuable information that can turn simple inventions of their imagination into what people will call great products. In the early stages, these can be recordings of generated ideas. However, during the project, it can be compared to a puzzle that connects ideas to new designs and can also be a reference for previous ideas that can be refined. All of this contributes a lot to the next steps. You`ll know what questions to ask yourself before you put anything on paper (or CAD). The first step in creating a product concept is to identify the concerns and problems of your target market. Find out what bothers people the most and how these issues can lead to worse conditions. This forms the basis of the final product.
Brainstorming can result in dozens or hundreds of ideas that need to be reviewed, sorted, and then evaluated before a single idea can be selected. It is essential to be selective about the concepts to be pursued from the stack generated during the ideation phase. In the selection of concepts, all ideas are organized and analyzed. It is important to understand how to group and organize the results of a brainstorming session so that they can be presented and analyzed in a meaningful way. Grouping ideas together can reveal potential gaps or biases in proposed solutions, as well as opportunities to combine ideas into unique and synergistic ideas, ultimately resulting in more optimal, cohesive and comprehensive solutions that meet the need better than any single concept. It is also important to learn to objectively compare all options to the specification of defined needs in order to determine the way forward based on how each option meets the need. Brainstorming describes a set of creative problem-solving methods implemented in both groups and individuals. The term was popularized by Osborn in his 1953 book Applied Imagination, which initiated the study of creativity in business development.
The principles proposed by Osborn more than half a century ago still apply today: it is important that participants – in any variation of a brainstorming session – set aside preconceived ideas or preemptively formulated solutions and “temporarily suspend their instinct to criticize new ideas.” They need to “open their minds to a creative flow” of new possibilities and look for original, even unusual, connections between the ideas generated. While critical filtering is necessary and important at many stages of product development, including later in the concept development process, it can be counterproductive to a team`s bottom line when thinking about solutions first. It can be quite difficult for people in scientific fields, who are so used to finding quick and correct solutions, to refrain from making quick judgments about new ideas. This is one of the many reasons why building a multidisciplinary team and seeking unique interdisciplinary perspectives is extremely important for group brainstorming. However, looking at the problem from different angles can lead to concepts that you might not have developed without careful consideration. Therefore, it is a crucial part of the product development process. Therefore, you really need to be methodical at this point. Visit the site (e.g. production facilities), ask questions about the objectives of the project, who should benefit how, what the design requirements are, etc. The same process is carried out until each person recovers their original paper after a full circle.
And now you have a total of 108 ideas. Yes, some of them are very raw and partial. But you`ve just spent less than an hour (including setting up the meeting and explaining what`s going to happen) to generate a wide range of concepts for your product. Researching existing concepts and optimizing them can reduce the costs of researching and formulating new products. It is easier to implement an already existing and functional concept than to take the time to generate new concepts. Now you have a wealth of ideas in front of you. They understand that not all ideas generated can be useful for product design. Nevertheless, the goal was achieved: to get team members to express themselves freely and let ideas flow. However, the pile of ideas needs to be reviewed to separate useful ideas from the lot. In this phase, concepts for product design are created.
At this stage, each step taken is the result of the idea that was born from the meeting with your team. When developing conceptual processes, a team is paramount. This ensures a pool of ideas to choose from and a number of professionals to take care of. Once you`ve developed some good concepts, it`s time to evaluate each idea and determine which ones have the best chance of becoming products. Depending on the industry and customers, different concepts offer better success. Concept development processes are mapped out stages of concept creation. They are designed to help designers with a concise product design plan. The formulation of these processes requires the creativity and know-how of the product development team. This is because they need to carefully study and understand the customer`s idea in order to generate design solutions that complement the customer`s idea and solve the desired problem. External research is a process of gathering information.
It should be done to find existing concepts that relate to both the overall problem and the sub-problems identified during the problem-solving stage. Implementing an existing solution can be easier, cheaper, and much faster than developing a new one. Another option is to optimize an existing solution or apply it unchanged to one sub-problem and combine it with an original concept for another sub-problem to achieve a new and improved overall design. Screening is designed to filter the vast universe of ideas to those that best meet the need. This requires rigorous comparison and analysis with the original statement of requirements and needs criteria explicitly defined in the client`s specifications to see which concepts meet the requirements and which do not. It is important not to lose sight of these original specifications. Any changes or compromises to specifications can undermine the integrity of the selection process and lead to poor decisions. Concept maps provide a better understanding of the different parameters to which each solution is aligned. Although this method is not completely safe, it is a good attempt to objectively assess the current state of concepts. Keep in mind that some solutions may meet the criteria of need, but should still be excluded from the review because they are too impractical or impractical in the circumstances, for example: technological limitations, potential concerns of customers or users, etc. Although it is relatively rare, if the review reveals too many solid potential concepts instead of approaches that meet the need criteria, the needs criteria may be too broad, forcing the innovator to rethink the requirements specification to generate more specific criteria. Some additional tools that can be used are the conceptual classification tree, which is used to rearrange lists or mind maps by function, and the concept combination table, which provides a method for systematically combining solution fragments – each column of the table represents a subproblem and each row represents a conceptual solution.
First, go through the ideas and pick a few that sound like great candidates – 3-5 concepts would be great. As the Yellow Team learned the hard way, it is much more effective to conduct this research by first gathering information that might be related to the problem, and then focusing the scope of the research by looking at more focused details. An unbalanced approach leads to inefficient external research. Examples of good resources include: patent and published literature search – the yellow team completed this step during the first half of the project, but found it to be a somewhat vague resource; Product related to benchmarking – with the help of some of the department`s academic advisors, the Yellow team was able to recreate the device`s circuit (Figure 4) to fully understand it. Interviews with key users and expert consultants – the yellow team did this by working with an active ophthalmologist to identify project requirements and ultimately narrow the scope. You can think of a product as a system in development. Many transactions take place in relation to this system – what inputs does the user give to the product and what outputs are received? This analysis is important to understand the dependencies and risks of the product and determine what needs to happen in between. The “intermediate things” are the secondary problems. Systems engineering is a way to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer requirements and required functionality before proceeding to design synthesis and system validation with the whole problem in mind.
Discuss excerpts from your meeting with your team`s client. The goal is to give your team a mental picture of the product and the problem they want to tackle. The team can discuss ideas for the new product and suggest specifications as needed. In this article, we will explore the process of product design, how to generate product concepts, the importance of concept generation in product design, etc. This article serves as a step-by-step guide and answers questions about what concept generation is in new product development. Why it leads to developing great product designs. Let`s get started right away so you understand how the process works. The creation of product concepts, often expressed as 3D models or rough sketches accompanied by a short text description, is an attempt by product developers to provide useful information about how the product works.
