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Snukzle: Reverse Ideation for Snake Inspired Wooden Puzzles

Snukzle: Reverse Ideation for Snake Inspired Wooden Puzzles

By Tojin T. Eapen

We used advanced text-to-image generation techniques to create designs for "Snukzle," a concept brand of wooden children's puzzle toys inspired by the appearance of the crab. The goal of this project was to assess the capabilities of generative AI models in producing novel and appealing visual designs for Snukzle products that are both visually interesting and can be used as a trigger to generate useful products through reverse ideation.

Snukzle: Reverse Ideation for Snake Inspired Wooden Puzzles

Our prompts yielded a vast array of designs, which effectively demonstrated the potential of utilizing text-to-image models during the initial stages of developing new products, particularly for consumer products where a distinct visual aesthetic is a crucial aspect of its appeal. The collage below showcases a selection of the various Snukzle mechanical puzzle concepts that we generated through this method.

Snukzle: Reverse Ideation for Snake Inspired Wooden Puzzles

Reverse Ideation

The way in which the Snukzle puzzle concepts using this approach are used or played with is not immediately apparent and is up to the designer to imagine and figure out through a reverse ideation process. In other words, it is a puzzle left for the designer to unravel based simply on visual clues. The next step in the idea management process is to infer the function from the design. Creating a large number of such designs can encourage the designer to think creatively and explore new possibilities. Such designs can also be used as part of a market research activity or focus group exercise to generate new insights into potential new products. We refer to this process as reverse ideation.

This post is part of a series of articles on the use of generative AI for bioinspired product ideation. The use of AI for product concept generation allows for the quick creation of many potentially novel designs, which could then be evaluated and refined to select the most promising concepts to move to the next stage of the product development process.

To learn how leading Fortune Global 500 companies such as ABB, Bosch, Google, Samsung, and NetApp have used Innomantra's Functional Innovation Methodology to turbocharge their idea management process, schedule a meeting today at calendly.com/innomantra.

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