The Innovation Canvas as a Teaching Tool in Capstone Design: A Reverse-Engineering Case Study

The design process is often perceived by students as a sequential or structured process even though design instructors try to focus attention on the iterative decisions, tradeoffs, and complexities associated with successful product, process, or service development. The Innovation Canvas was developed with the intent of more closely representing the process as it occurs in practice – a complex integration of design, business, and market themes. As an educational tool, the Innovation Canvas provides opportunities for design teams to organize, communicate, refine, and reflect on ideas and decisions in an integrated and linked framework. A prototype version of the Innovation Canvas was introduced to thirteen biomedical engineering design teams (40 students) during a regularly scheduled capstone design lab to observe and evaluate novice student interactions with the material. Due to the complexity of the Innovation Canvas and lack of experience with using it in the classroom, the instructors chose to introduce it in the context of a reverse engineering activity. After completing the reverse engineering activity, the student teams explored the Innovation Canvas in terms of new product development. This paper will introduce the Innovation Canvas, discuss its implementation as a teaching tool in design, and present formative assessment results for the activity. What is the Innovation Canvas? The Innovation Canvas (IC) 1,2 is a solution-development framework (shared under a Creative Commons 3 license) that guides teams through the design process by merging themes from product design, business, and marketing in a way that more closely represents the process as it occurs in practice. 4-7 In addition, it may provide design educators with an assessment tool for student learning as it provides an opportunity to compare initial, mid, and final versions of the IC during the course of a capstone design project. The IC may also help design teams focus attention on critical issues that can determine the success of a new design and to recognize the interconnection and overlap between the various technical and non-technical issues related to successful product development. Another potential strength of the IC for use in a capstone design course is the “at-a-glance” view of the critical components that must be considered, evaluated, and revisited during product development – the structure and interaction with the IC makes it difficult for students to ignore the “iterative” nature of the design process. The IC supports a large number of design tools, methods, and approaches for implementation, such as Voice of the Customer, TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving), Taguchi Methods, etc. Details regarding suggested tools and methods that may be incorporated into the IC, as well as other fundamental IC development components were presented by Kline et al. 1 The intent of this paper is to provide formative feedback for future IC implementation and to investigate its potential as a teaching/assessment tool for capstone design instructors. P ge 24228.2 Layout of the Innovation Canvas The IC (Figure 1) is arranged in four quadrants surrounding a central theme of Value. Creating value is the primary objective of most design projects or ventures; therefore it takes “center stage” on the IC. The “value proposition” is a statement that describes how something of value is provided to customers/stakeholders (i.e. describing the need that the proposed solution is going to meet) and is often a primary measure of success. It should be noted that the concept of value has a very broad meaning and includes financial, societal, cultural, environmental, sustainability, and ethical valuations. The Value component of the IC is critical for design students as it puts their work in perspective – they must understand that products, services, and processes are not developed in a vacuum, but as a result of a complex and important evaluation of value to customers/stakeholders. The four quadrants surrounding the central theme of Value are Explore, Ideate, Market, and Design. The Explore quadrant provides opportunities for the design team to expand on concepts or opportunities for product or service development. The idea may still be emerging and design teams can utilize Voice of the Customer and Market Feedback knowledge to allow the new venture to take shape with discussion. For example, customer stories and scenarios may be obtained and discussed to develop a clearer picture of the market/need. In general, the Explore quadrant requires that a design team become better acquainted with the reality of the current (or potential) market. The key themes in the Ideate quadrant are inspired by common design process themes and a model-based systems engineering approach. In the Ideate quadrant, the design team focuses on “what” the product should do, but not “how” it will be accomplished. The design team must consider the key functions of the system, the external systems that it interacts with, and the key features that will be marketed to the customer. The functions and features are the basic building blocks of the design process, while considering external systems helps the team to reveal the inputs, outputs, and interfaces of the system that are required to satisfy the customer stories and scenarios collected in the Explore quadrant. The key themes in the Design quadrant are also inspired by common design process themes and a model-based systems engineering approach. Design teams are asked to consider the key components and modules of the product, the factors that are critical to product success, and the critical risk factors for this product. The design team must discuss “how” the product will meet the needs (implement the functions identified as necessary in the Ideate quadrant) and a final concept is selected and realized in components or modules. The step of mapping of functions to components can illustrate concepts of modular and integral designs. In the Market quadrant, the focus is on the business model for the venture and the information entered here directly feeds back to the other three quadrants. It should be noted that for new products, all themes in the market quadrant would be relevant. However, for a smaller design project, all themes may not be relevant but should be carefully considered. P ge 24228.3 F ig u re 1 . T h e In n o v at io n C a n v as ( IC ) is a rr an g ed i n to f o u r q u ad ra n ts s u rr o u n d in g a c e n tr al V a lu e th e m e.