• Archives of design research
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.133-144
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• 1999

Considering product as mass of information, it is very critical for designers to have good means of accessing to and organizing information on products. However, designers conventionally depend on their experience, bunch of catalogues, or short visit to some fairs for gathering information on products. There are no systematically organized information for designing new products. If any, those are ones developed by market researchers or engineers who speak fundamentally different language from designers. It is needed to develop the information system through which designer can get insights on the essence of product and communicate information with various persons involved in new product planning. At first, the design information in product planning is discussed and the necessity of development of new design information system is emphasized. Then, product is understood as a composite of various attributes and a set of fundamental attributes of product is defined by surveying and summarizing existing theories of product attributes: namely technological, human, and market attributes. The possibility of new design information system is explored by analyzing various relationships between attributes of different products. Computer program 'DISPP' displays various visual information of product itself, perceptual map, trend slope, profile chart and general information of manufacturer, style, color, price, size. Finally, findings of thesis are concluded and further prospects of the study are proposed.