Assessing the Variety of a Concept Space Using an Unbiased Estimate of Rao's Quadratic Index

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Majumder, Anubhab, Pal, Ujjwal, Chakrabarti, Amaresh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Majumder, Anubhab
Pal, Ujjwal
Chakrabarti, Amaresh
author_facet Majumder, Anubhab
Pal, Ujjwal
Chakrabarti, Amaresh
contents Past research relates design creativity to 'divergent thinking,' i.e., how well the concept space is explored during the early phase of design. Researchers have argued that generating several concepts would increase the chances of producing better design solutions. 'Variety' is one of the parameters by which one can quantify the breadth of a concept space explored by the designers. It is useful to assess variety at the conceptual design stage because, at this stage, designers have the freedom to explore different solution principles so as to satisfy a design problem with substantially novel concepts. This article elaborates on and critically examines the existing variety metrics from the engineering design literature, discussing their limitations. A new distance-based variety metric is proposed, along with a prescriptive framework to support the assessment process. This framework uses the SAPPhIRE model of causality as a knowledge representation scheme to measure the real-valued distance between two design concepts. The proposed framework is implemented in a software tool called 'VariAnT.' Furthermore, the tool's application is demonstrated through an illustrative example.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_00684
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Assessing the Variety of a Concept Space Using an Unbiased Estimate of Rao's Quadratic Index
Majumder, Anubhab
Pal, Ujjwal
Chakrabarti, Amaresh
Computation and Language
Past research relates design creativity to 'divergent thinking,' i.e., how well the concept space is explored during the early phase of design. Researchers have argued that generating several concepts would increase the chances of producing better design solutions. 'Variety' is one of the parameters by which one can quantify the breadth of a concept space explored by the designers. It is useful to assess variety at the conceptual design stage because, at this stage, designers have the freedom to explore different solution principles so as to satisfy a design problem with substantially novel concepts. This article elaborates on and critically examines the existing variety metrics from the engineering design literature, discussing their limitations. A new distance-based variety metric is proposed, along with a prescriptive framework to support the assessment process. This framework uses the SAPPhIRE model of causality as a knowledge representation scheme to measure the real-valued distance between two design concepts. The proposed framework is implemented in a software tool called 'VariAnT.' Furthermore, the tool's application is demonstrated through an illustrative example.
title Assessing the Variety of a Concept Space Using an Unbiased Estimate of Rao's Quadratic Index
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00684