Design Trend Analysis and Design Innovation Based on Card Heuristic Method

Abstract

Quickly uncovering innovation opportunities from trends is an important step in the pre-design phase and an essential skill for designers. However, there is no specific and detailed set of methods on how to get design inspiration by analyzing trends. In our research, we designed and validated an innovative approach in using heuristic cards to expand on design trends. The first is the acquisition of trend keywords. Through the collection of relevant trends of a research topic, some keywords are extracted by the method of text summarization. Next, research on trend-based creative stimulation is carried out, using the acquired trend keywords to make physical cards, which are used by designers for brainstorming and design inspiration. This form can assist designers in the divergence of thinking in the early stage of design. The third part describes how to evaluate the effectiveness of the process in stimulating creativity. This method can help designers turn intangible trends into tangible, exploitable design opportunities that can be better utilized.