My DIY Design Becomes an Innovation Evaluation Metric! ... UNIST Develops 'Design Innovation' Evaluation Index

(From left) Professor Jeong Yeon-woo, Professor James Self, and Researcher Han Ga-eul are taking a group commemorative photo.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Hwang Du-yeol] An indicator that can evaluate 'design innovation' using data on everyday design innovation cases has been developed.

As interest in design innovation is increasing, it is expected to solve the existing problem of ambiguous measurement and evaluation methods.

The research team of Professors Jeong Yeon-woo and James Self from the Department of Design at UNIST analyzed 6,269 cases of everyday design data and developed an objective meaning innovation score to evaluate design innovation.

The research results were published in the March issue of the world-renowned design academic journal, The Design Journal by Routledge.

Design innovation focuses not only on new technologies or forms but also on changes in meaning.

It means that products that previously had specific functions and limited meanings can increase their value by adding new meanings and functions through design.

Han Ga-eul, the first author of the paper, explained, “Alessi’s ‘Anna-G,’ which adds meaning by combining a simple kitchen tool, a wine opener, with the image of a ballerina dancing to create a fun object, is a representative case of design-driven meaning innovation. Although many studies have explained innovation, there has been no objective evaluation method, so it has always been considered ambiguous and difficult to approach.”

The research team focused on the case of ‘IKEA hacking’ to solve this problem.

IKEA hacking refers to the act of purchasing flat-pack furniture products and creating new products by combining different products instead of assembling them according to the instructions.

This practice is so active that specialized communities sharing such cases have emerged.

The numerous product hacking cases disclosed in the community became materials for evaluating design innovation. The research team collected and reviewed about 6,300 cases and selected 100 representative cases to analyze and evaluate changes in meaning.

During the analysis and evaluation process, they composed five key questions to assess the degree of design innovation and derived a scoring indicator to evaluate the extent.

Professor James Self said, “This study is an interesting research that discovered the potential of everyday design cases as an objective means to identify and evaluate design innovation. The developed indicator is expected to be used not only in theory and academic research but also in new product design and marketing fields.”

The research was released online on the 18th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.