Attribute Listing and Morphological Analysis

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Explore creative product ideas with attribute listing.

Being creative can be tough. Say you need to design a new product in a hurry. You might have to come up with a working prototype before a trade show, for example.

Or, maybe sales are flagging and you need to revitalize your existing products. And all you have in front of you is a blank screen!

That's where attribute listing and morphological analysis can help. In this article, we explore how these simple tools provide a logical, step-by-step process for generating great new design ideas, and for discarding the bad ones.

What Is Attribute Listing?

Attributes are the properties, qualities or design elements of the product or service that you want to produce. They're the things you need your product to have to satisfy your customers' needs.

For example, the attributes of a car would be build material, engine type, number of seats, trunk capacity, color, weight, price, and so on.

Or, if you want to design a new marketing strategy   , your attributes would include the markets open to you, the ways in which your product is used, and the skills you have available.

Attribute listing is the process of identifying these key features as they're needed in a new product or process. First, you select a product or process that you need to design or redesign. Then, you break it down into its key attributes or qualities.

This allows you to examine each attribute in turn, and to identify how you can improve its performance.

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