Combining Users' Cognition Noise with Interactive Genetic Algorithms and Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers for Product Color Design.

Product color plays a vital role in shaping brand style and affecting users' purchase decision. However, users' preferences about product color design schemes may vary due to their cognition differences. Although considering users' perception of product color has been widely performed by industrial designers, it is not effective to support this activity. In order to provide users with plentiful product color solutions as well as embody users' preference into product design process, involving users in interactive genetic algorithms (IGAs) is an effectual way to find optimum solutions. Nevertheless, cognition difference and uncertainty among users may lead to various understanding in line with IGA progressing. To address this issue, this study presents an advanced IGA by combining users' cognition noise which includes cognition phase, intermediate phase, and fatigue phase. Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are employed to represent uncertainty of users' evaluations. An algorithm is designed to find key parameters through similarity calculation between RGB value and their area proportion of two individuals and users' judgment. The interactive product color design process is put forward with an instance by comparing with an ordinary IGA. Results show that (1) knowledge background will significantly affect users' cognition about product colors and (2) the proposed method is helpful to improve convergence speed and evolution efficiency with convergence increasing from 67.5% to 82.5% and overall average evolutionary generations decreasing from 18.15 to 15.825. It is promising that the proposed method can help reduce users' cognition noise, promote convergence, and improve evolution efficiency of interactive product color design.

A Method for Consensus Reaching in Product Kansei Evaluation Using Advanced Particle Swarm Optimization.

Consumers' opinions toward product design alternatives are often subjective and perceptual, which reflect their perception about a product and can be described using Kansei adjectives. Therefore, Kansei evaluation is often employed to determine consumers' preference. However, how to identify and improve the reliability of consumers' Kansei evaluation opinions toward design alternatives has an important role in adding additional insurance and reducing uncertainty to successful product design. To solve this problem, this study employs a consensus model to measure consistence among consumers' opinions, and an advanced particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm combined with Linearly Decreasing Inertia Weight (LDW) method is proposed for consensus reaching by minimizing adjustment of consumers' opinions. Furthermore, the process of the proposed method is presented and the details are illustrated using an example of electronic scooter design evaluation. The case study reveals that the proposed method is promising for reaching a consensus through searching optimal solutions by PSO and improving the reliability of consumers' evaluation opinions toward design alternatives according to Kansei indexes.

Consumers' Kansei Needs Clustering Method for Product Emotional Design Based on Numerical Design Structure Matrix and Genetic Algorithms.

Consumers' Kansei needs reflect their perception about a product and always consist of a large number of adjectives. Reducing the dimension complexity of these needs to extract primary words not only enables the target product to be explicitly positioned, but also provides a convenient design basis for designers engaging in design work. Accordingly, this study employs a numerical design structure matrix (NDSM) by parameterizing a conventional DSM and integrating genetic algorithms to find optimum Kansei clusters. A four-point scale method is applied to assign link weights of every two Kansei adjectives as values of cells when constructing an NDSM. Genetic algorithms are used to cluster the Kansei NDSM and find optimum clusters. Furthermore, the process of the proposed method is presented. The details of the proposed approach are illustrated using an example of electronic scooter for Kansei needs clustering. The case study reveals that the proposed method is promising for clustering Kansei needs adjectives in product emotional design.