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Abstract Models of long-term product innovation depict the trajectory of products through an evolutionary selection metaphor in which product designs converge toward a dominant design. The product innovation literature favors trajectory descriptions based on the physical architecture of products while neglecting to account for the functional architecture. This paper offers a new way to explain the life cycle of product innovation by identifying motifs that describe a product’s functions. Functional motifs are recurrent function blocks across multiple generations of designs for a product. A collection of functional motifs defines the functional architecture of the product. Using some key examples from innovations in sewing machines, the paper illustrates the occurrence of motifs as the basis for detecting the emergence of a dominant design. Patents related to the sewing machine over 177 years are analyzed to identify functional motifs characterizing the evolution and convergence toward a dominant design. Results show that motifs do not change over long periods once a dominant design emerges, even though components continue to change. This observation confirms a view of dominant designs as a technological frame but refutes the notion that design no longer matters in the era of incremental change. These motifs refine our understanding of how designs evolve along a particular path over the course of product innovation. 

Abstract This paper applies a feminist critique of technology to develop a model for design trajectories, specifically the technology life cycle. The model aims to explain the origins of radical design changes even when scientific revolutions are absent (or distant) and radical performance improvements are inconsequential. The breast pump is introduced to illustrate how public health, social and cultural norms, federal policies, and identity influence a design trajectory. The breast pump’s delayed and limited evolution despite technology advances indicates the compounding consequences of these factors on a technology’s design trajectory. We then investigate the sewing machine (first patented in 1846) to explore this phenomenon more closely. Our research illustrates conditions under which a social norms lens might change the expected technological outcome predicted by purely economic or organizational models. By shifting the unit of analysis away from single designs to a trajectory of design cycles over time, this paper offers explanations for conditions under which designs will remain resistant to debiasing, with only minor incremental change, and the social dynamics associated with design discontinuities. Our model includes the social construct of gender norms as a socio-technological lens to examine the limitations of the traditional technology life cycle model. Finally, we discuss how our new model can update engineering design theory and pedagogy. 

Abstract Models of long-term product innovation depict the trajectory of products through an evolutionary selection metaphor in which product designs converge toward a dominant design. The product innovation literature favors trajectory descriptions based on the physical manifestations of products while neglecting to account for solution principles. This paper offers a new way to explain the life-cycle of product innovation through the identification of motifs that describe the functions of a product. Functional motifs are recurrent function blocks across multiple generations of designs for a product. A collection of functional motifs defines the functional architecture of the product. Using some key examples from innovations in sewing machines, the paper illustrates the occurrence of motifs as the basis for detecting the emergence of a dominant design. Patents related to the sewing machine over 177 years are analyzed to identify functional motifs characterizing the evolution and convergence toward a dominant design. Results show that motifs do not change over long periods once a dominant design emerges even though components continue to change. This observation confirms a view of dominant designs as a technological frame but refutes the notion that design no longer matters in the era of incremental change. These motifs refine our understanding of how designs evolve along a particular path over the course of product innovation. 

Abstract The development of example-based design support tools, such as those used for design-by-analogy, relies heavily on the computation of similarity between designs. Various vector- and graph-based similarity measures operationalize different principles to assess the similarity of designs. Despite the availability of various types of similarity measures and the widespread adoption of some, these measures have not been tested for cross-measure agreement, especially in a design context. In this paper, several vector- and graph-based similarity measures are tested across two datasets of functional models of products to explore the ways in which they find functionally similar designs. The results show that the network-based measures fundamentally operationalize functional similarity in a different way than vector-based measures. Based upon the findings, we recommend a graph-based similarity measure such as NetSimile in the early stages of design when divergence is desirable and a vector-based measure such as cosine similarity in a period of convergence, when the scope of the desired function implementation is clearer.