Emotion focused product idea generation: a methodology

When a person buys a product he or she is buying a physical artefact to achieve certain goal. But when the product is designed to offer an experience, people is buying an enjoyable time, a series of memorable events. Different kinds of pleasure can be associated to different positive emotions, and products can provoke a wide range of positive emotions. Developing products aimed to provoke intended emotions can support product differentiation; especially targeting positive emotions can enhance design innovation. Moreover, a product that offers positive experiences can amplify product purchase intentions and consequently affect the business impact for companies. Designers are aware that apart from product style, what is important to users is product’s emotional and symbolic values. In many manufacturing sectors members of innovative teams are forced to think and develop products beyond their utility. Whiting this context, the purpose of this paper is to present a methodology created to support companies at generating new product ideas in emotion focused projects; we have called it “Emotion-Driven Innovation”. In this work we also present the challenges of addressing innovation through emotion knowledge, and how the Emotion-Driven Innovation methodology offers practical approaches to companies cope with those challenges.