The process model to aid innovation of products conceptual design

Currently, designers often pay little attention to integrated innovation during the design process of products. In addition, the product assistance design systems mainly focus on the detailed design phrase and the construction function of mathematics models are often been neglected. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a conceptual design process model to aid multi-stage innovation of product design based on the integration of the essential rules of the Axiomatic Design (AD) model, Function-Behaviour-Structure (FBS) model, and the guideline of functional creative thinking logics. By utilising the function tree and functional structure tree as the mediums to express the design information and by applying the conflict solving strategies of Extensic theory, the conceptual design process is defined as an integrated system with five stages and four mappings. The integrated logical processes of this model are described with mathematical language. Thus, the whole transformation from design experiences to design principles and to mathematical model finally to aided design system is realized perfectly in the proposed process model. The meaningful exploration on the nature and practical processes of product conceptual design is carried out in this research.