Intuition-Based Browsing Interaction Towards Emotional Design Available to Purchase

Emotional qualities such as the product’s aesthetics are regarded as critical factors in mature products. In the mean time, the products, whichever they are matured or not, must satisfy the functional requirements from the customers considering the technical constraints. For emotional designing, the designer’s view point towards the design object plays a very critical role. However, those views are not well taken care of in the conventional design support tools. The author proposed the idea of perspective browsing, where the designer’s viewpoint is represented as “Perspective”. There can be a variety of “Perspective” during the product designing process, and these are all dynamic. If “Perspective” is well taken care of, kept, and shared during the designing process, the designer’s thought can be well maintained, activated, and transferred to the product design. To verify the effectiveness of the idea, Intuition-based Browsing Interaction system, or IBI system has been designed to support a bicycle design and implemented as a software tool. The main module of IBI is composed of four sub-modules; namely, parts/component, size/shape, technical calculation, and 3D modeling. Basic user interface is implemented to control the design operation. However, intuitive user interface is wrapped over the basic interface so that the user can intuitively use the system as an idea generation support tool. Some modules have a function as a portal to other systems or modules. Parts/component module works with internal/external database and 3D modeling module works with external modeling software. Showing the interaction example for a bicycle design, this paper presents how IBI system supports the designer. Even though IBI is still a prototype system for bicycle design, perspective browsing can be recognized for designing process of a bicycle. The designer can freely access to the design object from different perspectives to modify, update, change, evaluate in an intuitive manner. The target user of IBI is not only limited to product designer, but also is aimed at the customer who use the bicycle. Therefore, the customers themselves can participate in the designing activities and contribute to create innovative design based on the emotional feelings and inspirations.