Use of Future-Oriented Information in User-Centered Product Concept Ideation

User-centered product concept design aims at creating concepts of new products. Its success is dependent on the design team’s ability to use present-day information to come up with concepts concerning future products. This paper takes as its task to investigate and explore what underlies this use of future-oriented information and what challenges it poses at the creative stages of a design process. The proposed solution is based on an analytic division of available information into (1) trends such as company strategies, trends in the society and working life that denote changing conditions, and (2) stable context features that describe issues that are unlikely to change in the timeframe concerned. A small case study is presented that exemplifies how this analytic distinction can be put into use. More broadly, the paper encourages designers to think reflectively about the nature of information on which design decisions are based.