An Application of Concept Formation Support System to Design Problems and a Model of Concept Formation Process (<Survey Papers> Special Issue : Creative Thinking Support Systems)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a system to support design work which is one of the human creative activities. We have applied the system to the domain of automobile design. Conceptual design work of automobile has two phases. In the first phase, each designer builds a new design concept. In the second phase, designers decide a target design concept among their concepts. The system first analyzes existing automobile data statistically and visualize the result in a metric space. In conventional statistical analysis, we give some interpretation to the result. But in our system, the statistical method is used for the different purpose. The system shows its user the space to trigger his/her concept building. The user builds a new design concept by reconfiguring the space. The concept is saved in the database, and when designer group decide their target concept, the system analyzes the database and assists their decision making. Through the experiments, we have got a clue to consider the phenomenon of concept formation process. Based on it, we propose a model of concept formation process. We have confirmed that the system is useful for conceptual design work. The designer of an automobile company said that it is interesting and is effective to promote conceptual design work.