DESIGN-BY-ANALOGY USING THE WORDTREE METHOD AND AN AUTOMATED WORDTREE GENERATING TOOL

DS 68-7: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 11), Impacting Society through Engineering Design, Vol. 7: Human Behaviour in Design, Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark, 15.-19.08.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Badke-Schaub, P.
Author: Oriakhi, Edgar; Linsey, Julie; Peng, Xiaobo
Series: ICED
Section: Human Behaviour in Design
Page(s): 394-403

Abstract

Design-by-Analogy is an approach that is widely embraced by designers seeking innovation. The identification of analogies is difficult, often spontaneous and not done by a systematic design process. The WordTree Method is a Design-by-Analogy method developed to systematically lead designers to functional design analogies. The WordTree Method is a relatively new design method and until now, WordTrees have been generated manually. This paper discusses a tool called the WordTree Express (WTE) that automates the generation of WordTrees. A controlled experiment presented in this paper shows that WTE positively influences designer’s options and that designers can effectively use it to identify analogies. Recommendations for further work advancing the WordTree Method and contributions to Design-by-Analogy are presented in the concluding remarks.

Keywords: INNOVATION; DESIGN-BY-ANALOGY; CREATIVE DESIGN

Download