Product Design Support System Based on Embodiment of Vague Concept Using Thesaurus

This study proposes an encouragement-support system that helps designers embody concrete products from vague concepts. Designers are sometimes required to create products based on given vague concepts such as “cool” car or “interesting” story. Some designers have difficulty embodying such vague concepts. To encourage actual products from vague concepts, we must scrutinize the components of products and interpret their concepts by their own viewpoints. This study proposes two maps to consider design: a product map with which designers can organize the detailed components of a product and a sense-word map that automatically represents the synonyms of words that represent the concepts. By focusing on the detailed components of the product and their concepts separately and combining concepts with detailed components, designers can create products that follow the given concepts.