Integrated Product Development for Indoor Gardening Systems: A Comparative QFD-Kano-TRIZ-Based Conceptual Design Study

Abstract

Indoor gardening systems address domestic needs ranging from assisted plant care to small-scale cultivation and organic-waste recovery. This study presents a comparative conceptual-design analysis of two indoor gardening systems developed through a common product-development sequence comprising exploratory user surveys, requirement prioritization, benchmarking, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Kano-based satisfaction analysis, TRIZ contradiction analysis, concept generation, and product-architecture definition. The two cases used case-specific questionnaires, requirement sets, and scoring schemes, with normalized scores used to establish priorities within each case. The intelligent plant-care case resulted in an information-centred concept based on sensing, interactive feedback, and connectivity, while the cultivation-composting case produced a function- and material-flow-centred architecture integrating cultivation, irrigation, composting, odour filtration, and maintenance. The cross-case analysis traces how differences in user needs are reflected across successive design-decision layers, resulting in distinct technical priorities, contradiction structures, and product architectures while maintaining traceability. The study provides a comparative view of how an integrated early-stage design process translates case-specific user needs into distinct technical and architectural outcomes. Future work will extend the concepts through functional prototyping, technical testing, usability assessment, and environmental evaluation.