Soft Computing for Product Form and Product Color Design

Consumers are the crucial point for a product
successful or not in the high competitive market.
Whether consumers choose a product is often a black
box, and thus cannot be precisely described. As such,
soft computing (SC) is well suited to illustrate
consumers' perception. SC is defined as an emerging
approach to reasoning and learning the human mind in
an uncertainty and imprecision environment. SC
comprises several computing methods, such as neural
networks, fuzzy logic, and tabu search. This book
demonstrates the advantage of using SC for the
product form and the product color design. An
experimental study on mobile phones is conducted as
mobile phones are currently the most popular consumer
product and exhibit wide variety in product form and
color. The approach of this book can help product
designers understand consumers' perception and
translate consumers' feeling of a product into design
elements. The design database provides useful
insights to facilitate and simulate the design
process of products, when combined with the
computer-aided design system and the virtual reality
technology. This approach is applicable to other
products with various design elements.