The Strategy of Universal-Design Thinking in Architecturally Innovative Product Development

Universal design, as an important concept in product development, has been gradually implemented in various industries and firms, but most of the applications are aimed at the incremental innovation of product design. However, considering the differentiation of product types, the design factors are varied and not precise, which makes it difficult to effectively implement the existing universal-design principles in specific product designs when facing architecturally innovative product development, which leads to an increasing amount of time and resources. This study, with an umbrella stand as an example, proposes to design a new universal-design scale by combining the attributes of the umbrella stand, the existing universal-design principles and the usability principles at the beginning of the design. Then, through interviews and user surveys, cluster analysis is used to screen the products and refine the design factors. In addition, with the Quantification Type I, the universal-design principles and design factors are matched effectively in order to obtain the weight differences of the product design factors and eliminate unsuitable design factors, in order to guide product design. Finally, the universal umbrella-stand-design case is completed for verification. The results show that the universal umbrella stand has been significantly improved in the evaluation of universal-design principles. In the future design, architecturally innovative products with inaccurate design factors can also use this process to complete the design and development of the target product, and to significantly enhance the universal-design evaluation of the product.