Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Academic Research in Science, Technology and Engineering
Year: 2025
DOI:
[PDF]
Analysis Of the Influence of Product Morphology in Innovation Fostering Using Product Phenetics Dining Chairs as A Case Study
Miguel-Ángel Artacho-Ramírez, Xiangyu, Zou, Yuri Borgianni, and José-Manuel Arrufat-Álvarez
ABSTRACT:
The achievement of innovation is deemed as essentially beneficial in product design. It helps differentiate products from competitors, increase user satisfaction, and drive market growth. However, knowing the key aspects that make a product be perceived as innovative remains challenging. This study uses the Product Phenetics approach and its Design & Change Space concepts to relate product morphology and innovation. The authors chose fifteen existing dining chairs in the market, gathered their prices, and downloaded their 3D files from their brands’ websites. First, a focus group selected the seven most conventional chairs of the sample. These chairs were aligned with a common reference point and superimposed in a 3D space to obtain the Conventional Design Space (CDS). The remaining chairs, the so-called original ones, were aligned and superimposed one by one on the CDS. The geometry added to the CDS by each of them was identified and the Euclidean distance between each added voxel to the CDS was computed. Considering price as a valid innovation indicator, it was correlated with each model’s cumulative Euclidean distance. The results of the Pearson correlation test between price and distance showed a high and significant correlation (p<0.01) between those variables. Although further studies are necessary, it can be concluded that fundamental changes in product morphology can be an innovation driver for product design. At the same time, Product Phenetics can represent a fundamental element for a new promising approach to be used in innovation-oriented conceptual design tasks.
keywords: Change Space, Conceptual Design, Design Space, Innovation-oriented design, Morphological analysis