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Part Two
Design
Short case
Square watermelons! 5
It sounds like a joke, but it is a genuine product
innovation motivated by a market need. It’s green, it’s
square and it comes originally from Japan. It’s a square
watermelon! Why square? Because Japanese grocery
stores are not large and space cannot be wasted.
Similarly a round watermelon does not fit into a
refrigerator very conveniently. There is also the problem
of trying to cut the fruit when it kept rolling around. So
an innovative farmer from Japan’s south-western island
of Shikoku solved the problem devised with the idea of
making a cube-shaped watermelon which could easily be
packed and stored. But there is no genetic modification
or clever science involved in growing watermelons. It
simply involves placing the young fruit into wooden boxes
with clear sides. During its growth, the fruit naturally
swells to fill the surrounding shape. Now the idea has
spread from Japan. ‘Melons are among the most delicious
and refreshing fruit around but some people find them a
problem to store in their fridge or to cut because they roll
around,’ said Damien Sutherland, the exotic fruit buyer
from Tesco, the UK supermarket. ‘We’ve seen samples
of these watermelons and they literally stop you in their
tracks because they are so eye-catching. These square
melons will make it easier than ever to eat because they
can be served in long strips rather than in the crescent
shape.’ But not everyone liked the idea. Comments on
news web sites included: ‘Where will engineering
everyday things for our own unreasonable convenience
stop? I prefer melons to be the shape of melons!’, ‘They
are probably working on straight bananas next!’, and
‘I would like to buy square sausages, then they would be
easier to turn over in the frying pan Round sausages are
hard to keep cooked all over.’
Source: Getty Images
Design criteria
Feasibility
Acceptability
Vulnerability
Concept screening
Not all concepts which are generated will necessarily be capable of further development
into products and services. Designers need to be selective as to which concepts they progress
to the next design stage. The purpose of the concept-screening stage is to take the flow of
concepts and evaluate them. Evaluation in design means assessing the worth or value of each
design option, so that a choice can be made between them. This involves assessing each concept
or option against a number of design criteria. While the criteria used in any particular
design exercise will depend on the nature and circumstances of the exercise, it is useful to
think in terms of three broad categories of design criteria:
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●
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The feasibility of the design option – can we do it?
– Do we have the skills (quality of resources)?
– Do we have the organizational capacity (quantity of resources)?
– Do we have the financial resources to cope with this option?
The acceptability of the design option – do we want to do it
– Does the option satisfy the performance criteria which the design is trying to achieve?
(These will differ for different designs.)
– Will our customers want it?
– Does the option give a satisfactory financial return?
The vulnerability of each design option – do we want to take the risk? That is,
– Do we understand the full consequences of adopting the option?
– Being pessimistic, what could go wrong if we adopt the option? What would be the consequences
of everything going wrong? (This is called the ‘downside risk’ of an option.)
Figure 5.4 illustrates this classification of design criteria.