Development for Creative and Inventive Design Support System 1st Report, systematic approach and application of creative and inventive thinking process

Attractive product is changed significantly by requirement definition and conceptual design phases. Quality of product concept, which is result of these phases, depends heavily on creativity of designer or development team. Therefore, it is difficulty that computer-aided system supports a creative and inventive thinking process, to search a creative design solution. To overcome its difficulty, we survey study results of this thinking process at engineering design and inventive problem solving fields. Based on this observation, this paper proposes a systematic approach of the creative and inventive thinking process for Creative and inventive Design Support System (CDSS). The proposed approach is combined problem understanding and solving processes to simplify its thinking process. In addition, we introduce three methods-contradiction understanding and solving methods and the invention principle of TRIZ-to this approach. Its validity is ascertained through applying to the conceptual design of walk assist machine for the old age.