Evidence-based design heuristics for idea generation

- 3457 concepts created by industrial and engineering designers are combined across four studies.
- Observations go beyond products to consider multiple concepts generated for a given problem.
- A master set of 77 design heuristics is extracted from a variety of design problems and designers.
- The observed design heuristics capture ways to introduce variations into candidate concepts.
- Design heuristics can help designers explore alternative concepts in early conceptual design.

How do product designers create multiple concepts to consider? To address this question, we combine evidence from four empirical studies of design process and outcomes, including award-winning products, multiple concepts for a project by an experienced industrial designer, and concept sets from 48 industrial and engineering designers for a single design problem. This compilation of over 3450 design process outcomes is analyzed to extract concept variations evident across design problems and solutions. The resulting set of patterns, in the form of 77 Design Heuristics, catalog how designers appear to introduce intentional variation into conceptual product designs. These heuristics provide 'cognitive shortcuts' that can help designers generate more, and more varied, candidate concepts to consider in the early phases of design.