Inventive methods in designing an environmentally friendly household appliance

Abstract

The paper looks at a concept of an eco-friendly household appliance. Owing to an innovative approach to the design process, the functionality of an existing product has been altered. Inventive creation methods have been applied to involve respondents in the search for innovative solutions. A new approach to designing products, eco-design is based on identifying the environmental impact of a product and incorporating it into early stages of the design process. Eco-innovation consists in creating innovative goods, services, products, processes, systems or procedures at competitive prices, aimed at meeting human needs and ensuring better quality of life with minimum possible consumption of natural resources (materials, energy, space) per manufacturing unit and minimum possible release of toxic substances. Selected inventive creation methods used in the study, such as brainstorming, stimulation, crumbling, play on words, and superposition, are described. The results of the study have been used to design the concept of an eco-innovative product – a small refrigerator for storing medicines and cosmetics. An ecological analysis of the product has been performed and its price estimated and compared to the market price of a similar product.