An integrated prototyping and knowledge representation procedure for customer-oriented product design

Design alternative generation is regarded as a key activity in Product Design and Development (PDD) by determining the success of a PDD project. This study presents a design alternative generation procedure that integrates a design prototyping approach and a rule-based system to improve PDD efficiency. This approach aids designers in identifying design parameters and values in the development process and the rule-based system assists designers to link user requirements with design characteristics. In addition, an external computer programming procedure is established to identify variables and develop form representation for the design components. A case study on cup design is used to illustrate and validate the proposed approach. The results demonstrated the potential of the approach in enhancing the efficiency of conventional product design expert systems and providing the designer with a rapid way to generate design alternatives.