Design creativity: refined method for novelty assessment

Figures & data

Figure 1. Steps in the novelty assessment method of Sarkar and Chakrabarti (2011).

Figure 2. SAPPhIRE model of causality (Chakrabarti et al., 2005).

Figure 3. Modification 1: Addition of a step to consider differences only in terms of inputs.

Figure 4. Modification to ascertain whether or not a product is novel.

Figure 5. Illustration of products with different inputs and physical effects.

Figure 6. Modification 3: Addition of a step to consider differences in physical effects and inputs.

Figure 7. Conceptual solutions to lift a moderately heavy object.

Figure 8. Modification 4: Addition of a step to consider differences in inputs and parts/organs.

Figure 9. Refined novelty assessment method (Legend: M – Modification, see Section 3 for details).

Table 1. Average novelty ranks by experienced designers, and by using the refined method and Sarkar and Chakrabarti’s method (3, 4 means the rank can be 3 or 4).

		Experienced designers	Refined method	Sarkar and Chakrabarti’s method
Product set 1: Internal combustion engines	Product 1	1	1	1
	Product 2	2	2	2
	Product 3	3	3	3,4
	Product 4	4	4	3,4
Product set 2: Warming small quantity of water	Product 1	3	2	1
	Product 2	2	3,4	2,3,4
	Product 3	1	1	2,3,4
	Product 4	4	3,4	2,3,4
Product set 3: Lifting a moderately heavy object	Product 1	2	2,3	2,3,4
	Product 2	1	1	1
	Product 3	3	2,3	2,3,4
	Product 4	4	4	2,3,4

Note:

This table shows average novelty ranks; these are not scores.

Table 2. Spearman’s rank correlations.

	Product set 1	Product set 2	Product set 3	Average
Experienced – Refined method	1.000	0.650	0.950	0.867
Experienced – Sarkar and Chakrabarti’s method	0.950	0.000	0.800	0.583

Notes:

Levels of significance of the correlations: p < 0.1 for values ≤ 0.62, p < 0.05 for values (0.63–0.70), p < 0.02 for values (0.71–0.79) and p < 0.01 for values ≥ 0.80 (Corr, 2010).

Chakrabarti, A., Sarkar, P., Leelavathamma, B., & Nataraju, B. (2005). A functional representation for aiding biomimetic and artificial inspiration of new ideas. AIE EDAM, 19(02), 113–132.

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Corr. (2010). Critical values of the correlation coefficient. Retrieved from http://www.microbiologybytes.com/maths/rtable.html

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