Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps : a directed design-by-analogy technique

Engineering design researchers have sought to harness the power of analogy in the design process through the development of directed design-by-analogy techniques. The majority of these techniques focus on identifying potential analogies as opposed to the application of the analogies to a design problem. The Analogy Seeded Mind-Map tool was created to provide designers a way to utilize the identified analogies to solve their design problem. The utility of the method was demonstrated across design activities utilizing both prescribed design problems and more traditional, open-ended design problems. Designers utilizing the method were able to come up with numerous potential solutions to their design problem through the analogical relationship between key functional verbs and related verbal analogies. A series of experiments was performed to determine if it was possible to identify relational or independent properties of the verbal analogies that have a statistically significant effect on evaluation metrics of the concepts generated. The first experiment evaluated the effect of analogical distance as measured by the path length between two verbs in the structure of an online verbal synonym database. The study showed an inconclusive effect of this measure of analogical distance on the evaluation metrics. The second experiment evaluated the effect of word familiarity and the number of definitions of a word on the quantity of concepts generated. Familiarity was assessed utilizing a survey administered prior to the concept generation exercise and the number of definitions was determined by referencing a standard dictionary. The study showed an inconclusive effect of familiarity and number of definitions on the evaluation metrics. The third experiment evaluated the alternative representation of analogies as pictures on the evaluation metrics. Pictorial representation of analogies resulted in a statistically significant increase in the novelty of concepts generated. The fourth and final experiment compared the performance of verbally related and unrelated words on the quantity, quality, and novelty of concepts generated. There was not a statistically significant difference observed for the quantity, quality, or novelty of the concepts generated using related and unrelated verbs. However, related verbs demonstrated an increased efficiency (quality ideas vs total ideas) compared to unrelated words.Mechanical Engineerin