Product Innovation Design Process Model Based on Functional Genes Extraction and Construction

The product innovation design is an innovation-intensive process that requires abundant knowledge and design experience, even across industries and disciplines, as a resource for problem solving. Therefore, designers need to have a good command of more design knowledge in this process. However, due to varied expressions of design knowledge (function, principle, structure) in different fields lead to the difficulty in representation of design knowledge, which makes designers unable to innovate by directly using design knowledge. Therefore, to solve the problem above, this paper, analogous to biological gene, proposes a product innovation process model based on functional gene extraction and construction. The proposed process model normalizes design knowledge through functional genes and help designers acquire design knowledge in different fields, which further promotes the product innovation design. The process model consists of four following steps. First, Obtain the overall function of product based on user needs and decompose it. Second, Build the functional gene model based on digital twin ones to expand the breadth of design knowledge and facilitate the retrieval. Third, Screen similar functional gene by the functional similarity algorithm. Finally, Obtain the design scheme through recombination, transcription, and translation of the functional gene. The feasibility of the research method is verified by using a shared bicycle parking device as an example.