Collaborative product conceptualization tool using web technology

A product concept can be considered to be an approximate description of the working principles, overall form and technology of the product and can be expressed as a rough sketch or a 3D model, with accompanying notes to support the visual representation. Generation of concept ideas and selection of the best concept are two activities involved in any product conceptualization stage of the design process. Whereas generation of concepts is both a creative as well as an exploratory activity, the selection process requires general agreement or a methodology among the participating members. This paper presents an approach to develop and implement an architecture to support geographically dispersed designers, to effectively develop and select the product concept, through a collaborative effort. A tool based on the World Wide Web (WWW), which allows designers to represent their concepts and also aids them to search existing ideas on similar products is developed. The issue of selection of the best concept is tackled by adopting the 'gallery method', through a module, which computes ratings for individual drawings for a pre-discussed set of criteria. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.