The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

2.6 The Design and Styling of Future Things

Wouter Eggink

University of Twente, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Department Design, Production and Management, The Netherlands

2.6.1 Introduction

Design and styling of new products used to be easy. Modernism depicted that the new product should be designed to fit the utility function of the object efficiently, and that the shape should be geometric and clean. Postmodernism of the 1980s, however, re-introduced the idea of cultural reference and emotion in product design. From then on, products had to communicate not only a utility function but also cultural context and moral values (Krippendorff, 2007). Increased interest in the perception of these products by their intended users added a role for psychology and emotion in product design in the late 1990s (Desmet, 2002). Finally, the idea of product experience, introduced in the beginning of the twenty-first century, added an important role for the use of products (Green, 2002). From then on, using products should also be pleasurable and provide a memorable experience (Schifferstein and Hekkert, 2007). A lot of work has been done on mastering this increasing complexity, mostly relying on step-by-step methodology.

The design and styling of innovative products are even more complicated, depending on their innovativeness. When incremental innovation is applied, the characteristics of relating products can provide a reference for the design of new ones. One can think of the classic example ...