It is not easy to grasp and apply consumer needs to product design process as they are getting sophisticated more and more with the social prosperity. Particularly, the ambiguous definition of needs and the absence of systematic need structuring method in design field make it more difficult to grasp consumer needs.
The goal of this study is to establish method that structuralize customers' product cognition in the form of network for applying practically in the phase of the product concept development and to develop product cognition analyzing tool.
Product cognition analyzing tool in this study is composed of specifying procedure subdivided into three stages : stage one, consumer estimates product cognition factors by answering questions which ask importance of cognition factors. Stage two, analyze the information gathered on stage one and calculate importance value of product cognition units and link value between each units. Stage three, propose product cognition map visually and analyze the map using additional information which helps to understand cognition map for application to design concept development.
The significance of analyzing product cognition by network form can be summarized as follows. Several levels of cognition factors like functional attribute, image of appearance, dimensional attribute, customer needs can be merged into one level in a product cognition map by network form. It reflects what consumer actually recognize, therefore each factor can be analyzed more closely through observation of near factors to estimate abstract design concept.
