Jean-François Omhover

TRENDS: a content-based information retrieval system for designers

The TRENDS European project aimed at developing an image and text retrieval engine in order to support the activity of the designers in the early stages of their design process [TRENS 2007]. The study of the designers activity has led us to the production of an image database in which designers will find inspirational material. A content-based image search engine has been elaborated, starting from recommendations taken from the methodology employed by the designers in their activity, to end with a complete system incorporating image retrieval technologies and various tools to extract relevant information from these images.

A new semantic text-image search engine for car designers

The Trends Research ENabler for Design Specifications (TRENDS) system integrates flexible content-based image retrieval facilities with database management and other useful functionalities that aim at improving the inspirational information gathering process in the early design stages. TRENDS is a 6th Framework Programme IST project, funded by the EC that started 01/01/2006 and will end 31/12/2008. It aims at elaborating the design trend boards dedicated to product designers in business to consumer markets such as for the automotive and original equipment manufacturers. The main innovation is related to the content based image and semantic text information search engines and to the integration of the elements under a cutting edge user interface specially designed to fulfill the designerspsila requirements.

State of the Art in Designers’ Cognitive Activities and Computational Support: With Emphasis on the Information Categorization in the Early Stages of Design

Nowadays, the growth of interest is the analysis of designers’ cognitive activities [2]- [10].This interest has become a major interdisciplinary topic not only in design science, but also in cognitive psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence. In this context, the analysis of the designer’s cognitive activity aims to describe more clearly the mental strategies for solving design problems and to develop computational tools to support designers in the early stages of design. Insofar as much design research depends on findings from empirical studies [11], the results of these studies have shown neglected the cognitive aspects involving in construction, categorization and effective application of design information for idea generation in the early stages of design which is relatively implicit. So, in this paper, we provide the state of the art in designers’ cognitive activities and computational support with emphasis on the information categorization in the early stages of design through a review of a wide range of literature. We also present a case study of the ‘TRENDS’ system which is positioned in the core of these research tendency. Finally, we discuss the limitations of current research and perspectives for the further work.