A product innovation method based on the synergy between TRIZ and Interaction Design

Modern industries operate under very selective conditions, as all the competitors develop efficient and effective products. For this reason, innovation is one of the main ways to lead the market. There are some methods and tools to analytically help designers towards the generation of new ideas. TRIZ is one of these methods. But all of this is not enough to generate a success product, because a fundamental actor is still underestimated, the final user of the product under development. To satisfy the user's requirements, designers and developers must keep into consideration also the Interaction Design methods. Unfortunately, these methods are not as structured as the TRIZ theory and very often it is very difficult to apply them in an effective way. For all of this, it appears quite reasonable to think about the development of innovative, easy-to-use products, as helped by a synergy between the Interaction Design and the TRIZ theories. After some highlights about analogies and differences of these two domains, this paper develops the basis for the generation of a new integrated analytical method able to suggest a collection of guidelines for the definition and implementation of engineering requirements. Then this method is described, and the summary of a case study performed to validate the method closes the paper.