Innovation is an essential element in the creation of competitive advantage and the development of any business. An innovation can be the result of the continuous improvement of an existing solution or a new and unique solution resulting from a discontinuous process. The use of a user-centred design approach is recognised as enabling innovative product design. However, this methodological framework is not suitable for the development phases of an emerging technology (or technological module). A technological module is an invention at the laboratory stage where, by definition, future uses and/or users are not well identified. This study presents an approach to identify the possible future uses of technological modules whose users are misidentified. This approach is based on user-centred design processes. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach, an example of a technological module was studied. A smart composite structure is a structure made of composite material in which smart materials are integrated to make it functional. The results obtained show that this approach makes it possible to identify new fields of application, which have not yet been considered by the smart composite community.

创新是创造竞争优势和发展任何业务的基本要素。创新可以是现有解决方案不断改进的结果，也可以是不连续过程产生的新的独特解决方案。使用以用户为中心的设计方法被认为可以实现创新的产品设计。然而，这种方法论框架不适用于新兴技术（或技术模块）的开发阶段。技术模块是实验室阶段的发明，根据定义，未来用途和/或用户没有得到很好的识别。本研究提出了一种方法来识别其用户被错误识别的技术模块的未来可能用途。这种方法基于以用户为中心的设计过程。为了证明所提出方法的潜力，研究了一个技术模块的例子。智能复合结构是由复合材料制成的结构，其中集成了智能材料以使其具有功能。获得的结果表明，这种方法可以识别智能复合社区尚未考虑的新应用领域。