A Design Support System Using Analogy

Analogy is one of the useful tools for creative designs. Most design by analogy systems use within-domain analogies to adapt an old design to a new situation. As design from a between-domain analogy may yield more creative results, it raises issues of how such analogical design can be initiated and what such an approach can do to help the design process. In this paper, we propose a computational model for a design support system that uses between-domain analogy, the system finds analogical mappings through causal links between structure and structure, and between structure and behaviour. The analogical reasoning process is accomplished using the design prototype as the representation.