scholarly journals Product Design Evaluation Method Using Consensus Measurement, Network Analysis, and AHP

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Yan-pu Yang ◽  
Hong-liang Tian ◽  
Sheng-jie Jiao

Product evaluation practices spread throughout from initial creative stages to final products before communicating them to the market. They emphasize on assessing design alternatives against specified criteria, which can help promote design process, ensure design quality, and diminish design risk before making a decision. However, how to identify and improve the reliability of product evaluation opinions toward design alternatives has an important role in adding additional insurance and reducing uncertainty to successful product design. Aiming at this issue, this study employs a consensus model by integrating network analysis and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The consensus model is constructed to measure the consistency of evaluators’ preferences and determine the rounds of evaluation. Complex network theory is integrated into the product evaluation process for network analysis of evaluators’ opinions, which can help determine evaluators’ weights in each evaluation round dynamically by changing the network topology. To obtain the weight of product evaluation indices, the AHP method is applied to avoid subjectivity given by evaluators. The process of the proposed method is presented, and the details are illustrated using a product evaluation example. The case study demonstrates that the proposed method is promising for improving the consensus level of evaluators’ opinions, reducing the influence of subjectivity, and finally improving the quality of design decision-making.

Author(s):  
Chul Woo Kim ◽  
Jungchul Park ◽  
Myung Hwan Yun ◽  
Sung H. Han ◽  
Hee-Dong Ko

The objective of this study was to develop a product evaluation method applicable to virtual prototypes and to apply the method to automobile interior design. Considering that virtual reality-based product prototypes could represent design alternatives comparable to physical prototypes, prototypes developed in virtual reality environments were employed as design alternatives. After a procedure to evaluate virtual prototypes was developed specifically for a virtual reality environment, the procedure was applied to the problem of automobile interior design. 34 subjects evaluated 32 different virtual prototypes generated from the combination of design element variations. Four categories of subjective impression were used to evaluate the 32 virtual prototypes: luxuriousness, comfort, harmoniousness, and controllability. ANOVA and multiple linear regression analysis were performed to specify design elements critical to customer preference and to interpret the relationship between design elements and subjective impressions. As the result, the shapes of frontal area including crash pad and center fascia, door trim and steering wheel were selected as important variables related to subjective impressions. The proposed evaluation method for virtual prototypes could be utilized as an alternative way of identifying the relationship between subjective impressions and design elements.


Symmetry ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Tianxiong Wang

Product designers need to fully understand consumers’ emotional preferences and responses for product forms to improve products. However, users and designers have different understandings and concepts in the product evaluation process, which will lead to cognitive asymmetry in the product design and evaluating process. This phenomenon prevents designers to grasp users’ needs, increasing the risk of product development failure. To this end, this paper proposes a product evaluation method that combines natural language processing techniques and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making into a new integrated way to reduce the cognitive difference between users and designers, so as to solve the problem of cognitive asymmetry. This was done firstly by obtaining the review data of products from users on the Internet, based on a web crawler, and then constructing word vectors based on natural language processing techniques to realize the parametric expression of the Kansei image. Secondly, by using a statistical method to extract the product scheme that meets the preferences of users and designers, and then quantifying the relationship between the product form and Kansei image based on a grey relational analysis (GRA). Finally, by calculating the indicator weight based on the Entropy method and using the fuzzy TOPSIS method to explore the prioritization of the product design alternatives in view of the Kansei needs of users. Taking the smart capsule coffee machine as an example, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method are verified. In particular, the method proposed in this research can not only enable different cognitive subjects to achieve cognitive symmetry, but also filter out product forms that meet the cognitive needs of users. Moreover, this study provides a theoretical basis and practical significance for reducing the cognitive differences between cognitive subjects in the whole process of product design, and provides a systematic framework for the industry to effectively connect customer needs and product design decisions. At the same time, this study has introduced a new method for Kansei engineering.


Author(s):  
Murtuza N. Shergadwala ◽  
Jitesh H. Panchal

Abstract In this study, we focus on crowdsourcing contests for engineering design problems where contestants search for design alternatives. Our stakeholder is a designer of such a contest who requires support to make decisions, such as whether to share opponent-specific information with the contestants. There is a significant gap in our understanding of how sharing opponent-specific information influences a contestant’s information acquisition decision such as whether to stop searching for design alternatives. Such decisions in turn affect the outcomes of a design contest. To address this gap, the objective of this study is to investigate how participants’ decision to stop searching for a design solution is influenced by the knowledge about their opponent’s past performance. The objective is achieved by conducting a protocol study where participants are interviewed at the end of a behavioral experiment. In the experiment, participants compete against opponents with strong (or poor) performance records. We find that individuals make decisions to stop acquiring information based on various thresholds such as a target design quality, the number of resources they want to spend, and the amount of design objective improvement they seek in sequential search. The threshold values for such stopping criteria are influenced by the contestant’s perception about the competitiveness of their opponent. Such insights can enable contest designers to make decisions about sharing opponent-specific information with participants, such as the resources utilized by the opponent towards purposefully improving the outcomes of an engineering design contest.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Li

<p>This study analyzed an evaluation method on new product design over the internet. The expert evaluation is an essential part in product producing and consuming chain. The research takes the Tai Huoniao website (http://www.taihuoniao.com) as a thinking point, which used scoring on product design works. The research uses the analysis hierarchy process method in product evaluation, adding a quantitative analysis on expert-rating. The method also brings an influence on product design works in evaluating online. It is evident that the weight of criterion over the expert evaluation is strongly influenced consumer’s decision-making. By the way of imposing weight on criterion after expert evaluation, it provides an approach for designer to learn more about how can a new product be assessed on computer screen. The weighting on criterion supports the new product design efficiently. The aim of the research is to evaluate the product design criterion in AHP method so as to meet the consumers’ need.<strong></strong></p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Li ◽  
Xingsheng Jiang ◽  
Jingye Li ◽  
Yadong Zhao ◽  
Xuexing Li

Background: In the whole design process of modular fuel tank, there are some unreasonable phenomena. As a result, there are some defects in the design of modular fuel tank, and the function does not meet the requirements in advance. This paper studies this problem. Objective: Through on-the-spot investigation of the factory, a mechanical design process model is designed. The model can provide reference for product design participants on product design time and design quality, and can effectively solve the problem of low product design quality caused by unreasonable product design time arrangement. Methods: After sorting out the data from the factory investigation, computer software is used to program, simulate the information input of mechanical design process, and the final reference value is got. Results: This mechanical design process model is used to guide the design and production of a new project, nearly 3 months ahead of the original project completion time. Conclusion: This mechanical design process model can effectively guide the product design process, which is of great significance to the whole mechanical design field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 2927-2955
Author(s):  
Mar Palmeros Parada ◽  
Lotte Asveld ◽  
Patricia Osseweijer ◽  
John Alexander Posada

AbstractBiobased production has been promoted as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources. However, controversies over its impact on sustainability highlight societal concerns, value tensions and uncertainties that have not been taken into account during its development. In this work, the consideration of stakeholders’ values in a biorefinery design project is investigated. Value sensitive design (VSD) is a promising approach to the design of technologies with consideration of stakeholders’ values, however, it is not directly applicable for complex systems like biorefineries. Therefore, some elements of VSD, such as the identification of relevant values and their connection to a technology’s features, are brought into biorefinery design practice. Midstream modulation (MM), an approach to promoting the consideration of societal aspects during research and development activities, is applied to promote reflection and value considerations during the design decision making. As result, it is shown that MM interventions during the design process led to new design alternatives in support of stakeholders' values, and allowed to recognize and respond to emerging value tensions within the scope of the project. In this way, the present work shows a novel approach for the technical investigation of VSD, especially for biorefineries. Also, based on this work it is argued that not only reflection, but also flexibility and openness are important for the application of VSD in the context of biorefinery design.


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