Design-by-analogy: experimental evaluation of a functional analogy search methodology for concept generation improvement
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163_2014_Article_186.pdf
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1.74 MB
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Author(s)
Murphy, Jeremy
Yang, Maria
Otto, Kevin
Jensen, Dan
Wood, Kristin
Fu, Katherine K
Date Issued
November 2014
Journal
Research in Engineering Design
Publisher
Springer London
Citation
Fu, Katherine et al. “Design-by-Analogy: Experimental Evaluation of a Functional Analogy Search Methodology for Concept Generation Improvement.” Research in Engineering Design 26.1 (2015): 77–95.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Design-by-analogy is a growing field of study and practice, due to its power to augment and extend traditional concept generation methods by expanding the set of generated ideas using similarity relationships from solutions to analogous problems. This paper presents the results of experimentally testing a new method for extracting functional analogies from general data sources, such as patent databases, to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies. In summary, the approach produces significantly improved results on the novelty of solutions generated and no significant change in the total quantity of solutions generated. Computationally, this design-by-analogy facilitation methodology uses a novel functional vector space representation to quantify the functional similarity between represented design problems and, in this case, patent descriptions of products. The mapping of the patents into the functional analogous words enables the generation of functionally relevant novel ideas that can be customized in various ways. Overall, this approach provides functionally relevant novel sources of design-by-analogy inspiration to designers and design teams.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-014-0186-4
