Collaborative Research: Extreme Experience Design for Breaking Barriers to Innovation

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COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Extreme Experience Design for Breaking Barriers to Innovation (0825461/0825713)Katja Hölttä-Otto (PI, UMass-Dartmouth), Carolyn Conner Seepersad (PI, UT Austin), Art Markman (Co-PI, UT Austin)The research objective of this award is to establish a structured conceptual design methodology, called Extreme Experience Design (EED), that stimulates innovation of breakthrough products by engaging designers in extreme experiences as part of concept generation. Extreme experiences expose the designer(s) to modified physical usage environments (e.g., moisture or noise) or altered means of interacting with the product physically, cognitively, or sensorially (e.g., limited dexterity via gloves or limited hearing via earplugs). These experiences are designed to help designers empathize with customers under a variety of conditions, and thereby design for the types of context-related latent needs that lead to breakthrough products. A series of experiments is planned to design and refine the EED methodology, to investigate its effectiveness, and to better understand how a designer's pre-ideation experiences affect the results of conceptual design. A two-phased Design of Experiments approach will be used to test the effectiveness of the EED methodology. The first phase will be designed to investigate the impact of extreme experiences and designer-prototype interaction, together and separately, on the outcomes of the conceptual design process. The second phase will be designed to investigate more closely whether different types of extreme experiences lead to different types of innovation.If successful, the results of this research will provide fundamental knowledge of the effects of extreme experiences and designer-prototype interaction on design fixation and a designer's ability to innovate. The knowledge will be incorporated in a new conceptual design approach, EED, that has the potential to enhance designers' abilities to generative innovative concepts by engaging them in pre-ideation, extreme experiences. Also, the proposed research is expected to have significant broader impacts. Research will be transferred from the laboratories to K-12 students, university students, industry, and the general public by means of online resources, outreach programs, industry interaction, and improved capabilities for universal design that improves quality of life.