Designing new products which satisfy the users' psychological and physical requirements is crucial for developing successful products in today's highly competitive market. People tend to have different preferences, knowledge, goals, etc. In order to satisfy individual needs, the diverse techniques of creating user models are required to be adapted in the design process.
This study aims to investigate fundamentals of user modeling and to develop a new method of identifying a user's needs through color meaning with computer-assisted programs. To achieve this goal, this study develops a systematic process and its practical application of user modeling to color combination.
On the basis of literature reviews on color studies, this study proposes a systematic approach of expressing color meanings and constructing a user model by utilizing membership function of fuzzy set. To analyze the color meaning of cognitive model, sugeno fuzzy integral and multidimensional scaling method are adapted. To explore the actual application method and the detailed application procedures of color meaning, this study builds a user model of color usages on web interface design. Although the usage of color combinations of web page are only one example of this study, this method can also be applied to other product designs or interface designs.
A computer-assisted user modeling system, called CO.S.MO.S.(COlor Semantic MOdifying System) is proposed in this study. Designed with Visual Basic, it provides an interactive design environment. This program is constructed by the image database and fuzzy query operations. Basic color combinations can be selected with inputting an image word(s) for describing the image of the required product design or interface design. After a basic color combination has been selected, new color combinations can further be generated by regulating rules which is obtained by multidimensional perceptual space. Then, designers evaluate these color combinations and select appropriate one to apply their design.
