AI-Assisted Design Concept Exploration Through Character Space Construction

Abstract

We propose an AI-assisted design concept exploration tool, the “Character Space Construction” (“CSC”). Concept designers explore and articulate the target product aesthetics and semantics in language, which is expressed using “Design Concept Phrases” (“DCPs”), that is, compound adjective phrases, and contrasting terms that convey what are not their target design concepts. Designers often utilize this dichotomy technique to communicate the nature of their aesthetic and semantic design concepts with stakeholders, especially in an early design development phase. The CSC assists this designers' cognitive activity by constructing a “Character Space” (“CS”), which is a semantic quadrant system, in a structured manner. A CS created by designers with the assistance of the CSC enables them to discern and explain their design concepts in contrast with opposing terms. These terms in a CS are retrieved and combined in the CSC by using a knowledge graph. The CSC presents terms and phrases as lists of candidates to users from which users will choose in order to define the target design concept, which is then visualized in a CS. The participants in our experiment, who were in the “arts and design” profession, were given two conditions under which to create DCPs and explain them. One group created and explained the DCPs with the assistance of the proposed CSC, and the other did the same task without this assistance, given the freedom to use any publicly available web search tools instead. The result showed that the group assisted by the CSC indicated their tasks were supported significantly better, especially in exploration, as measured by the Creativity Support Index (CSI).

Composing Mood Board with User Feedback in Concept Space

“…The MBC is an AI-assisted interactive web application that helps designers compose a mood board derived from a Design Concept Phrase (DCP) [13]. Mood boards composed by MBC are constructed in a grid of a × b tiles.…”

“…The MBC is designed to be used by concept designers who wish to explore and communicate their design concepts in visual representations. It also intends to build on the idea of the Character Space (CS) and the Design Concept Phrase (DCP) [13], on which users explore design concepts in a lexicosemantic space. The MBC assumes a DCP and searches images from Adobe Behance [16], a web-based portfolio service for professional and commercial artists.…”

Exploring Graphic Design and its Interactivity in the Context of Cognitive Psychology

“…After the mid-20th century, cognitive psychology penetrated the research fields of many disciplines, and research on the integration of cognitive psychology and art developed rapidly. Sano, S. and Yamada, S. construct a character space (CS), which is a space of visual psychological features with semantic quadrants, in which designers can complete the aesthetic semantics through the knowledge graph retrieval and the designer The effectiveness of CS for graphic design assistance is verified by measuring the Creativity Support Index (CSI) [12]. Zhao, L. constructs an educational model of "Artificial Intelligence + Art Design," in which designers can improve the creative ability of international art design through Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) during the design process, and the model can promote the psychological activity of the design process to achieve the goal of "Art Design".…”