Association rule mining for affective product design

Affective product design implies a gradual shift of design focus from functional aspect to affective/emotional aspect. It evolves as an interdisciplinary research topic between human factors, industrial design and many other disciplines. This paper applies association rule mining to reveal the mapping relations between customer affective needs and configuration of design elements. Generic affective dimensions of truck cab were identified by clustering analysis. A goodness criterion was introduced to refine association rules. A case study of Volvo truck cab design was conducted based on the proposed methods.