Wordtrees: A Method For Design By Analogy

Analogies to nature and other designs are recognized for its power in seeking innovative solutions. Currently available design methods provide little guidance for systematically identifying potential analogous solutions for a design problem. The typical guidance is that analogies are useful for seeking solutions and to look for analogies to other products and nature. Unfortunately the guidance provided ends here. This paper describes a new method for designing with analogies, called the WordTree Method. The WordTree Method provides designers with a systematic approach for re-representing their design problems and seeking potential analogies. This method is based on prior experimental results focused on understanding the cognitive processes involved during analogical reasoning and concept generation. The paper describes the method in detail and then presents results showing its effectiveness. The WordTree Method begins with the functions and customer needs of the problem. It then prescribes an approach to re-represent these functions and customer needs so that alternative retrieval cues can be developed. These retrieval cues are effective for both encouraging the engineers to retrieve other solutions from their memory and from databases. Alterative representations are developed both intuitively and through the use of databases readily available on the web. The alternative linguistic representations are then organized into WordTrees facilitating the identification of potential analogies and analogous domains. Analogies, along with analogous domains, are then researched. Concept generation can then be based on the new representations and analogies. A case study illustrates and evaluates the method. This method is appropriate for both professional and student engineers. The WordTree Method fills a gap in design class providing a tool for design-by-analogy.