Abstract
This paper describes the importance of the role of onomatope or imitation sound in interpreting the Japanese language. As Japanese use the same verbs for different situations or for contexts, onomatope is usually used to fill in the gap to describe behavior more precisely. Although sound has long been considered in our design, it was mostly for the later stages of design or in detailed design and it was not for the purpose of understanding the situation or the context better in the earlier stages of design in order to really grasp the intent of a customer's requirements. It is pointed out that research to introduce onomatope into design is needed to quantitatively and comprehensively make clear the role of onomatope in the Japanese language to correspond to our diversifying customer's requirements under quickly and widely varying conditions.
