Soft Computing for Product Form and Product Color Design: A.

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.

Yang-Cheng Lin is with the Department of Arts and Design, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan (e-mail: lyc0914@cm1.hinet.net). Graduated from the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan with a PhD of Industrial Design in 2004. Research Interests: Product Design, Human Factors, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Design, Computer Animation.