Supporting computer-aided product form design research with a cognitive model of the creative process

Companies need to innovate quickly to adapt to the current rapidly changing market environment. Therefore, methods to support the computer-aided creative design process have become a hot research topic, and a variety of methods to support research on creative systems have been derived on the basis of the designer’s cognition. This study establishes a general parametric design cognitive model to support the computer-aided creative process of directed design. First, this model divides a large amount of stimulus knowledge into corresponding levels through considers multiple dimensions of inspiration and stimulus factors. Second, this model develops and validates a form-generating design technology to replace a designer’s hand-drawn sketches. This technology can quickly obtain many effective product 3D models to further increase the speed of creative realization. Finally, this study verifies the model through a case study. Through the analysis of the case output results, we found that the model can quickly generate a three-dimensional sketch plan that meets the desired goals. In turn, the generated results can stimulate the designer to generate broader inspiration. Therefore, the computer-supported creative generation model established by this research has a certain degree of scientificity and feasibility. Its novelty lies in the method can liberate the designer’s labor to a certain extent and replace the designer in completing the directed creative generation process and the plan sketch process. And the verification process reflects certain cognitive mechanisms of the human brain, Therefore, this method can be applied to some specific design propositions.