Innovations in 2011

Popular Science came out with their list of products again. What all creativity can do! One of my favorites is the inverted chain saw - clever! The designers that came up with this concept really had to restructure the problem and let go of the traditional chainsaw concept.

In past work we have shown that innovative products tend to possess certain characteristics and that the competition is unable to catch the innovators even after a few years in the market. Specifically, innovative products tend to hit on average three of the 13 innovation characteristics when compared to the competition. Below is a table with three past PopSci award winning products analyzed against these characteristics.


The chain saw above, by the way hits modified physical layout (chain on the inside), modified physical demands (no exposed chain, less kickback), and additional function (gripping branch while sawing).

Innovation in Playground Design

I recently came across an article in TIME about designing better playgrounds.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2007398,00.html

David Rockwell designed playground equipment that consists of large foam blocks. Children can use them to build whatever they can imagine. In the article, children build cars, forts, etc.

We've been talking about how children's behavior contrasts with adults when it comes to imagination and design. Children have a lot of toys that encourage abstract representations, like Legos, dolls, blocks, and so forth. We wonder what happens between childhood and adulthood -- where does the creativity go? Children seem much less likely to fixate on the function of objects (seen in the real world, but also in research by German & Defeyter, 2000). Does fixation arise from additional knowledge, as suggested by the functional fixedness literature? Or is it the interaction with culture, expectations, etc.? Can innovation interventions help prevent fixation in design? We hope to find out through our research.