Creative design by analogy

Abstract

Design synthesis is considered as a search for possible candidates that satisfy initial design requirements, but how to navigate a designer to find creative design alternatives becomes very important to defining the boundary of the design searching space. Onetechnique,among others, to produce creative designs in a computer system is to use analogy. The role of analogy is to change the space of possible designs. Most current design systems that utilise analogy produce designs from analogous designs in the same domain. It is claimed that using a process that radically changes the space of possible designs is likely to produce more creative designs than one that only marginally modifies that space. The process of designing based on analogies with other designs from different and distant domains is presented in this paper as a computational approach to creative design using the concept of designing by exploration, since this process radically changes the space of possible designs. The processes required for such an approach to designing are developed. Examples of their use are given.