Where does Everyday Design Innovation come from?: Case studies in IKEA Product Hacking

Abstract

Background Design is no longer owned only by skilled designers. Product hacking, which has to emerge as a major phenomenon in industrial and consumer products, is an everyday design activity aimed at remaking and remanufacturing existing products that provide new meanings. This paper aims to contribute to identifying design innovation within cases of product hacking as examples of everyday design. Methods Product hacking workshops were conducted to explore the potential of conceptual blending as means to identify innovation in everyday design activity. Results Through a trial and error morphological approach, participants appeared to arrive at Aha! moments that then acted as a catalyst for the identification of a feasible blend possibility. Rather than the explicit operation or application of meaning blends in product hacking, participants relied upon the juxtaposition of existing products as both opportunity and constraint on product combination and meaning change. Conclusions Conceptual meaning blending may have the potential as means to identify and assess innovation in everyday design activity, including product hacking. However, results indicate that meaning blending and their meanings were not an explicit approach to meaning innovation through the blending of existing products. © 2021. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted educational and non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.