Applying and incorporating user driven innovation when designing concepts

This paper addresses the difficulties seen when working within the user driven innovation [UDI] paradigm. We examine some of the circumstances that often make it difficult to work with user insights in concept design. UDI has become a recognized design approach, but has not yet accommodated a design practice explicitly considering the type of user insights this approach implies. For that reason UDI has yet to prove itself and its potential effect; a study of Danish initiative “program for user driven innovation” has shown little effect in this regard. However it has shown that radical new insights have been produced but at the same time to abstract when integrated in the design process. We will discuss and propose a framework for working with user insights in concept design, based on existing concept frameworks but actively addressing and incorporating user insights as a new type of input.
This paper is based on practical experience working with theoretical concept frameworks, which have induced new perspectives in a reframing. We will account for the concept design process and why a reframing is called for when working with user research, leading to a proposal for new dimensions to the concept framework.