Towards a design for frugal: review of implications for product design

Since 2010 the concept of frugal innovation has increasingly attracted the attention of both researchers and industry. Frugal innovation holds much promise in the rapidly changing global economy. It has been suggested that this approach needs to be understood by product designers in order to integrate it into product development and bring frugal products into the market place. This research aims to review the current literature on frugal innovation and identify characteristics and methodologies for designing frugal products that has been proposed until now. Our review has analysed 28 journal articles. The results have found 10 design principles and 2 design methodologies that have been developed to achieve frugal products. More research has to be carried out to relate these methods with product development theories and understand the impact for product design practice.