Kansei Information Processes in Early Design: Design Cognition and Computation - Emotional Engineering - page 53

Kansei Information Processes in Early
Design: Design Cognition
and Computation

Carole Bouchard, Jean-Fran ç ois Omhover and Jieun Kim

Abstract This chapter considers the Kansei information processes involved in the
early design process. It emphasizes the necessity of formalizing the earliest phases
of design, i.e., the information phase. After a longitudinal research led since 1997,
a theoretical model of the information phase of design was proposed. This model
was then re ! ned through experiments that we led from various research projects
that were developed during the last years, thanks to national and European supports.
In the framework of the research presented here, the objective was to re ! ne the
model especially by considering the cognitive implicit operations which occur in
the early generative phases, i.e., between the inspirational phases and the sketching
ones. The paper starts with the de ! nition of the following terms: design process,
design information, sectors of analogy, kansei information, kansei structures, and
kansei rules. Kansei information characterizes the whole corpus of information
which the designers deal within the early design process. Especially, from the
information phase, the creative process based on metaphors and analogies is
decrypted and formalized, with the extraction of generic rules that, after under-
standing, may be used more systematically in the generative phase of design
through future computer-aided design tools. Finally, we discuss some advances
related to cognition and computation of Kansei processes in design.

Keywords Kansei information Information phase

Generative phase Early

design Analogical thinking Creativity Metaphors

C. Bouchard ( & ) J.-F. Omhover
Product Design and Innovation Laboratory (LCPI), Arts & Métiers ParisTech,
151 Bd de L'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France
e-mail: [e-mail]
J. Kim
Graduate School of Technology and Innovation Management, Hanyang University,
222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, 113-791 Seoul, Korea