Kansei information processes in early design: Design cognition and computation

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 refined 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 refine 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 definition 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 understanding, 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.