Patent ID: 6937913

Claim:
A process for designing a product automatically in accordance with a desired product design concept for a product under consideration, said process comprising: analyzing wants and needs information which has been input with respect to the product under consideration; based on the aforesaid analyzed wants and needs information, carrying out weighting with respect to evaluation indices which are quantitative measures of the degree to which a user is likely to perceive a benefit latent in the product under consideration and inherent in the aforesaid wants and needs information to have been achieved, and selecting at least one index among a plurality of such weighted evaluation indices as a primary evaluation index; and defining at least one product design concept for which the primary evaluation index selected at said primary evaluation index selecting step is a maximum or minimum, wherein said analysis step converts, as a result of application of a conversion rule previously stored in a storage device, said wants and needs information to desired quality information reflecting usage circumstances under which the user wishes to use the product under consideration; and said desired quality information is used in said primary evaluation index selecting a step to carry out weighting with respect to the aforesaid evaluation index.