Contribution to Book
Boosting Creativity in Idea Generation using Design Heuristics
Design and Design Thinking: Essentials in the PDMA’s New Product Development Series
(2015)
Abstract
When facing a design problem, designers across disciplines often fall into familiar patterns,
and have difficulty producing creative designs. Where do new design ideas come from? This
chapter presents a new tool to help with idea generation called Design Heuristics. These
heuristics capture the cognitive “shortcuts” that designers know to help them produce many
candidate designs with interesting variations to choose among. Through empirical studies of
industrial and engineering designers working on a variety of consumer products, a total of 77
Design Heuristics for use in new product development were identified. This empirical evidence
supports the value of the Design Heuristics tool in generating new designs across disciplines.
Next, we describe how to use Design Heuristics for idea generation in design contexts.
Design Heuristics help designers by suggesting specific ways to modify and extend existing
concepts, and each heuristic offers new possibilities for introducing variation. These easy-to-use
guidelines are described through examples of designers generating new concept ideas. Design
Heuristics can be applied to any type of product design, and examples of their use in award-winning
consumer products are provided. Studies of designers using this Design Heuristics tool
have shown its effectiveness in generating more, more varied, and more creative designs. As a
design tool based on evidence from the practice of designers, and empirically tested for
effectiveness, Design Heuristics are a helpful tool for designers in any area interested in
uncovering new ideas.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter February 1, 2015
Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Citation Information
Colleen M Seifert, Seda McKilligan and Shanna Daly. "Boosting Creativity in Idea Generation using Design Heuristics" Hoboken, NJDesign and Design Thinking: Essentials in the PDMA’s New Product Development Series (2015) p. 71 - 86 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/seda-yilmaz/43/