How Artificial Intelligence can contribute to boost Design towards Innovation. Presentation given at the World Education Day Conference, Dalian, China, Sept 27-29

1. Jonny Carlos da Silva, Dr.Eng.
Professor
Luiz Fernando de C. Botega, M.Eng.
Doctoral Student
How Artificial Intelligence can
contribute to boost Design
towards Innovation
Mechanical Engineering Department
UFSC- Brazil
World Education Day Conference, Dalian, China, Sept 27-29, 2017

2. UFSC-BRAZILSummary
•Introduction
•Artificial Intelligence (AI)
•Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS)
•New Product Design
•Innovation and creativity
•AI for creativity support
•Conclusions

3. UFSC-BRAZILIntroduction
•Artificial Intelligence
•Facilitate human mental or physical labor
•Organize and preserve knowledge
•Increasing use
•New Product Development
•Reach new solutions quickly
•Complex and multidisciplinary task
•Conflicting requirements from stakeholders

4. UFSC-BRAZILIntroduction
•Innovation and creativity
•Pressure on design teams
•High demand, tight deadlines, conflicting
requirements
•Complex to be represented by AI
•AI for creativity support
•Creativity techniques catalyze creation
•Asserting techniques – Knowledge-Based System
(KBS)
•Bridge from expert to designer

5. UFSC-BRAZIL
Artificial Intelligence
•Reliable, available and permanent
The study of how to make computers do things
which, at the moment, people do better
[Rich et al, 2009]
“
”

6. UFSC-BRAZILKnowledge-based systems
•Emulate decision-making ability
•Heuristic knowledge
•Requires cognitive skill
•Store rare skills
•Preserve and combine knowledge
•Train new personnel
•Offer counseling or second opinion

7. UFSC-BRAZIL
KBS representation and
structure
•Rules
•Conditional patterns leading to actions (if – then)
•Object-orientation
•Allows representation of higher complexity

8. UFSC-BRAZIL
New product development
(NPD)
•Complex process involving several areas
•Demands quick answers and market
differentiation
•Lack of NPD process structure may hamper
the development
•Good practices from successful endeavors
are documented to aid future NPD

9. UFSC-BRAZIL
New product development
(NPD)
•Prescriptive models
•Step-by-step
•PRODIP
•Descriptive models
•Good practices
•Design Thinking
•User-Centered Design

10. UFSC-BRAZIL
New product development (NPD)
PRODIP
•Prescriptive methodology
•Planning
•Opportunity identification
•Design Process
•Product conception
•Creativity permeates the
whole process
[Back et al, 2008]

11. UFSC-BRAZIL
Creativity on NPD
(Double Diamond methodology)
[DesignCouncil, 2015]

12. UFSC-BRAZILInnovation process
•Process of constantly
implementing new
solutions to users
•Culture of innovation
•Risk-orientation
•Optimistm
•Sense of belonging
•Freedom
•...
[Amabile, 1997]

13. UFSC-BRAZIL
Individual creative process
•Structured process
•Rational (conscious) phases
•Preparation and Verification
•Irrational (unconscious) phases
•Incubation and Illumination
•Bottleneck of the process:
•Incubation
[Baxter, 2011]

14. UFSC-BRAZIL
Innovation and Creativity
[Amabile, 1997]

15. UFSC-BRAZIL
Creativity techniques
•Templates to aid the creative process
•Formalizations of practices used to generate
and/or filter ideas
•+600 creativity techniques on literature
• From engineering, design, psychology, management,
anthropology
•Facilitators help select and use

16. UFSC-BRAZIL
KBS on creativity
•Offer creativity techniques alternatives
• Filtering adequate techniques
• Provide sufficient information for choosing and executing a
technique
• Overcome creativity blocks
•Target audience
• Anyone involved in solutions development

17. UFSC-BRAZIL
Implementation
•Inference machine: CLIPS v6.3
•Rules + COOL
•Input interface: Java
•Output interface: HTML
•6 classes, 5 message-handlers, 27 rules,
and 41 instances

18. UFSC-BRAZILKBS on creativity
•User’s answer to 9
questions about the design
scenario
•Questions add up to 504
possible scenarios
•KBS correlates values to 5
categories
•Adequate creativity
techniques are exported to
the user

19. UFSC-BRAZIL
Question Answers
Q1 Is the design based on existing products, focusing on improving or keeping
them in the market?
Yes / No
Q1.1 Does the design focus on coming up with new functions or reaching different
users with the current product?
Yes / No
Q2 Are the number of generated ideas and alternatives satisfactory for the
team?
Yes / No
Q3 Is there time available to explore ideas and alternatives? 1. Distant deadlines
2. Close deadlines
3. No
Q4 Does the team have members with different backgrounds and expertise
(multidisciplinary) in close and constant interaction?
Yes / No
Q5 Is there a dedicated room or an exclusive physical environment for the team? Yes / No
Q6 Does the team have online communication to help sharing progress and
information about the design?
Yes / No
Q7 Does the team have periodical meetings (daily or weekly) among all
members?
Yes / No
Q8 Does everyone on the team have good relationship to help each other and
exchange information?
Yes / No

20. UFSC-BRAZIL
Categories
•Innovation focus
•Related to the desired innovation
•Options: Incremental, Architectural or Radical
•Design step
•Related to the stage of development according to
the double diamond method
•Options: Develop or Deliver

21. UFSC-BRAZILCategories
•Difficulty of use
• Related to the expertise needed to use a creativity
technique
• Options: Low, Moderate or High
•Execution method
• Related to the technique is used
• Options : Verbal or Symbolic
•Team relationship
• Related to the personal relationship
• Options : Interactive or Dissociated

22. UFSC-BRAZILCorrelations (means)
Yes

23. UFSC-BRAZIL
Creativity techniques (outputs)
•Implemented techniques

24. UFSC-BRAZIL
Creativity techniques (outputs)
Technique Design Step
Innovation
Focus
Team
Relationship
Execution
Method
Difficulty of
use
Analogies
and
associations
Develop Rad Interactive Verbal Moderate
Functional
Tree
Develop Inc / Arch Dissociated Symbolic Moderate
Biomimetic
Develop &
Deliver
Rad
Interactive
&
Dissociated
Verbal High
Pugh Matrix Deliver Inc / Arch Dissociated Symbolic High
Brainwriting Develop Arch / Rad Dissociated Symbolic Low
Mind Map Develop
Inc / Arch /
Rad
Interactive Symbolic Low

25. UFSC-BRAZIL
Interface

26. UFSC-BRAZIL
Interface

27. UFSC-BRAZIL
Interface

28. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (usability)
•Usability test
• Language of input questions
• Relevance of implemented
techniques
• Adequacy and language of
outputs
• Overall performance of the
system
•First iteration
• 9 answered questionnaires
• 6 non-experts
• 3 experts
•Second iteration
• 6 answered questionnaires
• 3 non-experts
• 3 experts

29. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (usability)

30. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (usability)

31. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (knowledge-base)
•Knowledge-base
validation
• Black-box validation
• Coherence of inputs
• Coherence of outputs
•4 answered
questionnaires
• Two professors of
Mechanical Eng.
• Two doctoral students on
Knowledge and Management
Eng.

32. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (knowledge-base)
•Validators were instructed to read two
scenarios, indicate which techniques they
considered adequate and then execute the
software
•In all but one execution, at least one of the
KBS answers matched the validator’s
indicated techniques

33. UFSC-BRAZIL
Validation (knowledge-base)
•Validators agreed with 15
of the 21 asserted
techniques
• They disagreed with 3 and
were inconclusive with 3
• Validators reported knowing
1/3 of the asserted
techniques
•Overall, the techniques
were considered
adequate
•There is no consensus

34. UFSC-BRAZILConclusions
•Asserting creativity techniques demands expertise
•Many factors impact on the use of a technique
•Categories help the assertion
•Running prototype
•Incremental implementation
•9 questions, 24 techniques and 504 scenarios
•Unified language for creativity techniques

35. UFSC-BRAZIL
Conclusions
•Given the already extensive engineering curricula,
a KBS may aid students to become more creative
•This knowledge might be used during academy
projects on undergraduate courses
•Organizations might benefit from the approach to
learn new techniques and overcome barriers

36. UFSC-BRAZILFuture works
• Addition of new categories
• New approaches for correlation
• Machine learning
• New sorting considering great
number of techniques
• Project approved for a pre-
incubator phase

37. UFSC-BRAZIL
Vision
to be a reference on
AI applied to Creativity

38. UFSC-BRAZIL
Thank you
For more information about CRIB:
http://nedip.ufsc.br/site/crib/
Contact:
Jonny Silva:
jonny.silva@ufsc.br
Luiz Botega:
lfbotega@gmail.com