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Tooling of and training for collaborative, distributed product innovation

Project description


Digital libraries and technology-enhanced learning

Industries increasingly rely on innovative design. Innovative design is characterised by an intense, collaborative process of generating and exploring ideas meant to contribute to the solution of particular problems. Innovators go through cycles of divergence, in which new ideas are generated and explored, and convergence, in which new ideas are valued and detailed. These cycles rely on knowledge elicitation (formal learning) and knowledge sharing (informal learning). Innovators also need appropriate tools to generate ideas, reuse them, take them apart, criticise them, or even reject them. Currently, innovation processes use a large variety of tools, relatively independent of each other, with little or no regard for past efforts, with little or no attention to the context in which ideas arose.

The idSpace project addressed this issue by researching solutions that allow designers of innovative products to collaborate with each other, but most importantly to elaborate ideas and designs that have emerged earlier on, in previously held sessions with their own group or even in other groups. This is achieved through a dedicated platform which facilitates collaboration and, what is more, in which ideas are stored, reused and reworked - thus allowing to learn from them and tell about them.

The idSpace platform features an integrative toolset that allows a distributed team of innovators to create new ideas, to contribute to and preserve existing ideas, and to learn about and from them. It employs techniques for exploring new ideas (e.g. mind mapping in story writing and brainstorming) and for refinement of ideas (e.g. morphological analysis). The project developed tools to support traceability among stories, mind maps, concept maps, goals, as well as company values and policies. The platform further exhibits extensible, informal, pluggable pedagogical approaches, which drive specific uses of the toolset; and instantiates a flexible, context aware web-based platform, forming the substrate for communities of practice to grow and thrive.

The development of the idSpace environment was carried out in three phases: During the first year, the state of the art in informal learning, creativity techniques, and context awareness was researched, with a particular focus on distributed, collaborative product design. In parallel with this, experts were called upon to articulate their functional requirements. All information gathered as well as theoretical insights on adequate pedagogies, on idea generation and transformation and on the constraining effects of context were translated into functional design requirements for the idSpace platform.. The second phase was dedicated to the integration of the technical and functional requirements and their incorporation in the first fully functional prototype (built on the Liferay portal environment). The prototype was evaluated in several user-centric pilots. In the final stage, the platform was built and evaluated, paying attention to aspects such as informal learning, idea generation and context awareness. The results of the evaluation were used to create an updated and final prototype. The openness of the platform and code allows for future developments and adaptation.

Industries increasingly rely on innovative design. Innovative design is characterised by an intense, collaborative process of generating and exploring ideas meant to contribute to the solution of particular problems. Innovators go through cycles of divergence, in which new ideas are generated and explored, and convergence, in which new ideas are valued and detailed. These cycles rely on knowledge elicitation (formal learning) and knowledge sharing (informal learning). Innovators also need appropriate tools to generate ideas, reuse them, take them apart, criticise them, or even reject them. Currently, innovation processes use a large variety of tools, relatively independent of each other, with little or no regard for past efforts, with little or no attention to the context in which they arose. Also little effort is made to safeguard and share the results of the innovation process for future use, in other contexts, with other people. Optimally to foster the growth of new ideas and the elaboration of new production processes, past knowledge needs to be elicited and new knowledge needs to be shared and stored, all the while being aware of the rich context in which the ideas arose, were elaborated and fleshed out. To that end we will to design and build a responsive web-based environment – idSpace. It will offer an integrated suite of knowledge eliciting and sharing tools, and create a collective, sharable memory of the entire design process. idSpace, we surmise, forms the substrate for the emergence of a productive and lasting community of practice and learning that will maximally foster innovation. We will test our claims with users in realistic if not authentic settings as well as through the consultation of experts.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP7-ICT-2007-1
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Coordinator

OPEN UNIVERSITEIT NEDERLAND
EU contribution
€ 391 262,00
Address
VALKENBURGERWEG 177
6419 AT Heerlen
Netherlands

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Region
Zuid-Nederland Limburg (NL) Zuid-Limburg
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Jos Van den Broek (Mr)
Links
Total cost
No data

Participants (9)

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Last update: 15 July 2019

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/216199

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