Investigating new design concepts based on customer value and patent data: The case of a future mobility door

Design-based strategies are becoming as important in corporate competitive approaches as technology-based strategies, and accordingly, design patents have emerged as a mechanism for capturing technology opportunities. The text data of the design patent are not only simpler than the complex text structure of the utility patent but also clearly explain the application and design characteristics of the invention. Therefore, design patents have high value as an innovation database that can be complemented with utility data. Despite the potential of design patents as a source of technology intelligence, however, most studies on capturing technology opportunities have focused on utility patents. Therefore, this study proposed an approach to investigate new design concepts using design patents, and it employed the approach in the case of a future mobility door. More specifically, we first identified valuable design concepts within the target field (i.e., vehicle doors) and reference field (i.e., oven doors) to be applied to the target object (i.e., future mobility door), and we prioritized the ideas by technology- and user value-related criteria. Then, the highly-prioritized ideas were provided with the experts in the automobile industry to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The research outputs are expected to contribute to the development of product design concepts in a company by helping to discover technology opportunities with reference to the designs in other industries as well as within the target industry. • A framework to investigate new design concepts was proposed. • Design patents are analyzed as well as utility patents. • Two criteria of technology novelty and user value are considered. • Key patents are recommended within the target field and reference fields. • The design of future mobility doors was adopted for case study analysis.