Tamotsu Murakami

The University of Tokyo | Todai · Department of Mechanical Engineering

Recently in the field of design, it is becoming more important to generate innovative ideas of "what to create" at early design stage than ideas of "how well to make". Ideation informatics to enhance idea generation by adding systematicity and exhaustiveness of information technology to human intuition should be a prospective approach to the proble...

In this paper, creativity is analyzed and broke down into four elements: ideation potentiality, idea elicitability, planning ability and executive ability. Next, the effectiveness of various approaches and methods used in conventional design-and creativity-education, such as design and drafting, hands-on education, PBL, QFD, TRIZ, KJ method and Bra...

The purpose of this research is to extract tacit design knowledge and know-how by analyzing relationships between characteristics of CAD operations and their results such as design quality and work efficiency and utilizing the extracted knowledge and know-how in design education and practice. Most of CAD applications have functions to export operat...

In recent years, product design has become more and more difficult to win in the marketplace if the product is developed with a focus on improving functionality. It requires product design that includes new features and user experience, so the ability to conceive of them is an important element of design. In this paper, in order to help generate id...

This research shows the analysis of the designing process extracted from the macro-style operation log files exported from CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software. With digital transformation in manufacturing, CAD is getting more important and multi-functional. Designers must keep on learning to meet the demand of high-quality 3D models with low worki...

A Contradiction Matrix of TRIZ that classifies problems to solve as contradictions of features is an effective framework of knowledge management for problem solving. The features, however, may have a problem of completeness because they may not cover contradictions about all physical phenomena. In addition, rigidly structured Contradiction Matrix m...

In conventional game designs, only “positive” user experience (UX) such as how to make the game fun and attractive has been drawing attention. The play of a game, however, belongs to not only a context of a game but also comprehensive contexts including life and society. Problems such as being got a game machine away by parents because of too much...

Design knowledge management, by which design knowledge and information is described, stored, retrieved, utilized and inherited using information technology, is a promising approach to support design process of present recent advanced and complicated products. Since present product design and development processes are conducted globally in many case...

In the present competitive business environment, designers and engineers need to come up with creative, innovative and valuable design ideas. In engineering design, the function (F), behavior (B) and structure (S) of a product are discussed using design theory and methodology. On the other hand, the concept of user experience (UX) is becoming impor...

Recently designers and engineers need to come up with creative, innovative and valuable design ideas. In this paper, we first discuss concepts of function (F), behavior (B) and structure (S) of a product used in engineering design field and a concept of user experience (UX) used in product design field. Then we propose a delta design map based on F...

Aesthetic appeal of a product appearance can be an important contributor to consumer satisfaction. The present study aimed to elucidate the cognitive processes related to aesthetic sensibilities vis-à-vis product forms, using Electroencephalograms (EEGs). EEGs (65 electrode sites of the extended 10-20 system) were monitored, while the participants...

It is very important for designers to ensure safety and usability of products. Since detecting problems of safety and usability through user observation manually may have some difficulty from the viewpoints of time, efforts and reliability, a computerized aid is expected. In this paper, computerized methods of (1) obtaining information of user oper...

To design a delightful product, kansei of customers as well as technical requirements should be considered. Kansei engineering has been developed and implemented with different approaches, depending on the prospects and goals. It has been evolving and separated in important categories and this research aims at providing a new way, more systematic,...

The delight design platform (DDP) is a vision of a new integrated design environment that would enable design engineers to consistently design delightful products. Such delightful products satisfy an attractive quality as well as the performance and must-have qualities of the Kano model. The attractive quality depends on a customer’s subjective eva...

The delight design platform (DDP) is a vision of a new integrated design environment that would enable design engineers to consistently design delightful products. Such delightful products satisfy an attractive quality as well as the performance and must-have qualities of the Kano model. The attractive quality depends on a customer’s subjective eva...

Architects and designers consistently aim to develop products that consumers perceive as attractive based on their experience and intuition. To design a product form that is aesthetically appealing to consumers, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which human process information relating to aesthetic sensitivity, including intuitive pro...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of a fault using a fault tree diagram (FT diagram), which has a tree structure with logical steps. Design engineers developing a new product generally use FTA to analyze many fault events, calculate their probability, and include redundancy systems in the design process....

Recently, product market is entering maturity stage, and many products are commoditized. While conventional ways of product development which is successive functional improvement of prior product cannot break down products’ commoditization, innovation and creativity which offers differentiating features that allows for premium pricing is required....

The authors have been studying physical quantity dimension indexing as a knowledge management technology about physical phenomena such as faults and their causes in fault tree analysis (FTA). Although the technology enables us objectively and systematically describe and retrieve knowledge about physical phenomena that can be represented with physic...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of a fault using a fault tree diagram (FT diagram), which has a tree structure with logical steps. Design engineers developing a new product generally use FTA to analyze many fault events, calculate their probability, and include redundancy systems in the design process....

The previous dithering method for color universal design, lightness contrast dithering approximation, has problems that it changes all of the background of pictures and it is difficult for color vision handicapped person to perceive the detail drawing patterns of pictures in a particular dither size. Therefore in this study, methods of variable dit...

The authors have been proposing a new method of color universal design without restricting usage of colors and their combinations named “lightness contrast dithering”. A key idea is that a solid color and a dithering of darker and lighter colors which approximate the solid color may look almost similar for people with normal color vision, while the...

When a designer finds a problem during a development process, and effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all the possible causes of the problem by FTA and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree without any misunderstanding or oversight....

In the present competitive situation, it seems insufficient for designers/engineers to just solve or meet obvious and known problems or needs by evolution of existing approaches. The purpose of this research is to propose a method and a computational tool to support designer/engineers' idea generation so that they can find or discern potential but...

It is very important for designers to ensure the safety and usability of products. In this paper, a gap model between designers and users is first proposed as a framework to detect problems in safety and usability and to analyze the causes. Then methods to describe operations on a product, simulate its behavior as state transitions, and detect safe...

The authors propose computerized support for Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) based on new knowledge management in product design. FTA is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of a fault event by Fault Tree diagram (FT diagram) that has a tree structure with logical step. Many methods of support for FTA are studied, but they are not effective f...

It is very important for designers to achieve safety and usability of products. In this paper, first a gap model between designers and users is proposed as a framework to detect problems in safety and usability and to analyze the causes. Then methods to describe operations to a product, simulate its behavior as state transitions, and detect unsafet...

In the present competitive situation, it seems insufficient for designers/engineers to just solve or meet obvious and known problems or needs by evolution of existing approaches. The purpose of this research is to propose a method and a computational tool to support designer/engineers' idea generation so that they can find or discern potential but...

This paper proposes a new color universal design method without restricting usage of colors and their combinations using dithering technique. A key idea is that a solid color and a dithering of darker and lighter colors which approximate the solid color may look almost similar for people with normal color vision, while they could be distinguishable...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is an effective method of ensuring the security and safety of the product by identifying all the possible causes of the problem and fixing them. However, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree about various physical phenomena without any misunderstanding or oversight, and some computerized method...

This paper proposes a new color universal design method without restricting usage of colors and their combinations using dithering technique. A key idea is that a solid color and a dithering of darker and lighter colors to approximate the solid color may look as similar color by normal color vision whereas they could be distinguishable by color vis...

Fault Tree Analysis is one of effective methods of ensuring security and safety of a product. Creating a fault tree, however, requires a deep knowledge about the product and physical phenomena, and it takes a lot of time and effort to create one. To solve this problem, authors propose a knowledge management method called quantity dimension indexing...

A customer's emotional and Kansei responses to products are influenced by cognitive processes, such as their memories of the experience of using the product and their expectations of the product's performance. Here, we propose a cognitive, neural model of Expectology, as a framework to provide designers with a novel methodology for designing produc...

Fault Tree Analysis is one of an effective method of ensuring security and safety of a product. Though, creating a fault tree requires a deep knowledge about the product and physical phenomena, and it takes a lot of time and effort to create one. To solve this problem, authors propose a knowledge management method called quantity dimension indexing...

In this paper the authors propose computerized support for Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) based on new knowledge management in product design. FTA is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of a fault event by Fault Tree diagram (FT diagram) that has a tree structure with logical step. When we develop the new product, we use FTA to analyze the...

In the design of emotional qualities, which are evaluated by the customer's subjective impressions, feelings and emotions, such as a feeling towards product sound, a designer needs to find the design factors that affect the emotional quality and determine the characteristics of their effects. The authors previously proposed a method for extraction...

When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all the possible causes of the problem by FTA and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree without an...

This paper proposes a new color universal design method without restricting color combinations using dithering technique. A key idea is that a solid color and a dithering of darker and lighter colors to approximate the solid color may look as similar color by normal color vision whereas they could be distinguishable by color vision deficiencies bec...

Identify all the possible causes of faults of a product by Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) during design and development process and fixing them in advance should be an effective method to achieve reliability design. It is not, however, easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree without any misunderstanding or oversight. A promising approach...

In the present competitive environment, designers should try to create attractive products to give consumers not just the satisfaction they expect but delight beyond their expectations. For this purpose, the authors propose the concept of "Expectology" as a framework to provide designers with a systematic methodology for designing products consider...

The product sound is an important factor that affects the product emotional quality. In the design of product sound quality, a designer needs to find the design factors that affect the emotional quality and determine the characteristics of their effects. The authors previously proposed a method for extraction of potential emotional factors by analy...

In the design of matured product, it is important to design a product sound as a kansei(affective) quality. Most of product sounds have ultiple tones e.g. harmonic overtones caused by frequency of fans. In the music theory, tones have chords. People often feel comfortable in chordal tones. The authors assume that chordal harmony in machine sound im...

The authors have been studying a new fabrication method termed “refrigerative stereolithography” which uses a gel resin layer instead of a liquid layer as in conventional stereolithography. This paper proposes the “direct masking method” in which a masking pattern is drawn to block direct light exposure to the surface of the gel resin layer. With s...

In this paper, we propose a technology to automatically detect design problems of the product from user observation videos. In the proposed method, we attach color markers to necessary portions of a user and a product. Then we identify the coordinates of the markers in user observation videos by image analysis and color detection, compare the coord...

In the design of kansei (emotional) quality, one of the important issues is to extract causal relations between physical design attributes and the customer's emotional responses. Without such relations, a designer has to rely on his/her own sense that may be different from the customer's. In this paper, we propose a new method for extraction of log...

Recently, industries and society have been facing advanced, complicated and uncertain problems. Therefore, we need design engineering and science to solve such problems systematically, and hopefully we can achieve design innovation. In this paper, first, a design process is modeled as a cycle consisting of four subprocesses: (1) observing a user an...

In the design of matured product, it is important design a product sound as a kansei(affective) quality. Most of product sounds have ultiple tones e.g. harmonic overtones caused by frequency of fans. In the music theory, tones have chords. People often feel comfortable in chordal tones. The authors assume that chordal harmony in machine sound impro...

We proposed a new design knowledge management approach called quantity dimension indexing. Although the proposed approach is effective, the design engineering knowledge in actual design activities is described by literal expression. In this paper, we propose automatic indexing method to introduce the proposed approach to actual design activities. F...

In this report, we propose a technology to automatically detect design problems of the product from user observation videos. In the proposed method, we attach color markers to necessary portions of a user and a product. Then we identify the coordinates of the markers in user observation videos by image analysis and color detection, compare the coor...

Autologous-bone-replaceable artificial bones made of bioresorbable materials (e.g., β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP)) are degraded and resorbed, i.e., replaced with autologous bone, when placed inside the human body. Although such autologous-bone replaceability requires high porosity to promote the ingression of blood vessels and cells, the high poro...

When a designer finds or encounters a problem during design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all possible causes of the problem by Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree wi...

In the design of kansei (emotional) quality, one of the important issues is to extract causal relations between physical design attributes and the customer’s emotional responses. Without such relations, a designer has to rely on his/her own sense that may be different from the customer’s. In this paper, we propose a new method for extraction of log...

Recently, the use of bioresorbable materials (e.g., β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP)) has enabled the development of autologous-bone-replaceable artificial bones that are degraded and resorbed, i.e., replaced with autologous bone, when placed inside the human body for a sufficiently long duration. Although such autologous-bone replaceability requires...

In this work, we investigate the sense of harmony between sound quality and color sensitivity towards a consumer product. We conducted two sensory tests using vacuum cleaners as a case-study. In the first test, participants evaluated their total impressions of multiple samples having different colors and sounds using given adjective pairs. With the...

To design artifacts that make people's life and society wealthy in regard to both material and mind, it is necessary to consider not only their functions and performances but also other various factors which conventional engineering design does not necessarily cover such as emotion, feelings and aesthetics. In this paper, the authors describe their...

When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all the possible causes of the problem by fault tree analysis (FTA) and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete...

Product emotional quality consists of sensory information perceived through five senses by nature. Most conventional works in design for emotional quality have dealt with only one sense, e.g. a product color as a visual perception and a product sound as an auditory perception. There is an implicit assumption that the sensory information between dif...

In t his paper we propose a syste m that supports the observer to keep a r ecord, review and s hare fi ndings f rom use r o bservation. Some adva ntages of s uch t echnical s upport fo r user observation are that it can reduce the c ognitive load caused by the recording process so that the observer can focus on finding problems, and it facilitates...

When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all the possible causes of the problem by fault tree analysis (FTA) and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete...

In this paper, the authors propose computerized support for fault tree analysis (FTA) based on a new design knowledge management approach called quantity dimension indexing. When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identif...

In the design of emotional qualities, setting quantitative evaluation criteria to evaluate such qualities is important. Without such criteria, the designer has to rely on his/her sensitivity, which may be different from the customer's making it difficult to set a clear design goal. The customer's sensitivity towards such qualities is subjective, la...

In this paper, the authors propose computerized support for fault tree analysis (FTA) based on a new design knowledge management approach called quantity dimension indexing. When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identif...

We propose a new type of mock-up consisting of a transparent solid object, fabricated by stereolithography, with a small video camera embedded inside. By processing the video image of the object surface taken from the inside in real time, operation data of the mock-up (e.g., when interfaces such as buttons and dials are operated by the users) and u...

The aim of this research is to formulate relationships between the geometrical attributes of objects and affordance for operations as affordance features. If affordance features are well formulated, then they will allow designers to strengthen intended affordances for higher usability of products or to systematically examine and achieve product or...

Stair-stepping is one of the major causes of poor surface finish in stereolithography (SLA) and other rapid prototyping (RP) systems. Taking this effect as an inability of conventional scanning systems, which can only fabricate layers with straight edges, the authors have studied and implemented a new SLA scanning technique. In the new method, term...

An emotional quality is a product quality that is evaluated by the customer’s subjective impressions, feelings and emotions. In the design of emotional qualities, one of the most important and difficult issues is setting quantitative evaluation criteria to evaluate such qualities. The customer’s sensitivity towards such qualities is diverse and lat...

In the design of emotional qualities, which is evaluated by the customer's subjective impressions, feelings and emotions, one of the most important and difficult issues is setting quantitative evaluation criteria to evaluate such qualities. Without such evaluation criteria, the designer has to rely on his/her sensitivity, which may be different fro...

This paper proposes a quantification method of a product sound quality, which we call kansei quality, with attention paid to its diversity to support the affective sound design. The customer's sensitivity towards such a quality differs from person to person due to perception gaps and ambiguity. The proposed method helps the sound designer to grasp...

This paper describes a new quantification method of a product's emotional quality, which we call kansei quality, with attention paid to its diversity to support the affective design. The customer's sensitivity towards such a quality differs from person to person due to perception gaps and ambiguity. The proposed method helps the designer to grasp s...

Although fault tree analysis (FTA) is an effective method of ensuring security and safety of a product by identifying possible causes of faults, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree without any misunderstanding or oversight. To solve these problems, the authors propose a new design knowledge management approach called qu...

In the design of emotional qualities, one of the most important and difficult issues is setting quantitative evaluation criteria to evaluate such qualities. Without such evaluation criteria, the designer has to rely on his/her sensitivity, which may be different from the customer's, making it difficult to set a clear design goal. The customer's sen...

We have been studying rapid functional prototyping method for product usability design using internal video analysis. By processing the video image of the surface of a transparent mock-up taken from the inside with a small video camera embedded inside in real time, operation data of the mock-up (e.g., when interfaces such as buttons and dials are o...

In this paper, the authors propose computerized support for fault tree analysis (FTA) based on a new design knowledge management approach called quantity dimension indexing. FTA is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of fault events by expanding a fault event hierarchically to its possible cause events and constructing a tree diagram r...

There are three main issues when trying to capture the customer’s need for a product’s emotional quality such as its aesthetics. The first is that customers have difficulty externalizing their emotional needs even if they have a clear mental image of those needs. The second is that people have different sensitivities when perceiving emotional quali...

To respond recent diversifying customer's needs of a product, one of the most important work is to figure out customer's evaluation criterion of a product. Furthermore, emotional needs such as styling and user-friendliness, which is difficult to quantify, have been important factors with multitude of products having similar performance. Truly effec...

The aesthetics of a product's shape has become an important factor to increase the value of mature products. However, such emotional quality regarding the customer's need is difficult to capture due to its subjectivity. To address this issue, we have previously proposed shape generation methods that help the customers to externalize their image of...

This paper describes a new quantification method of a product's emotional quality, which we call kansei quality, with attention paid to its diversity to support the affective design. The customer's sensitivity towards such a quality differs from person to person due to perception gaps and ambiguity. The proposed method helps the designer to grasp s...

In this paper, we propose a method of the effective information management in safety knowledge for experiment and exercises in education. By using the safety knowledge dictionary, the words that related to safety knowledge is automatically retrieved from an experimental plan written by students. The dictionary holds local safety knowledge correspon...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a method to analyze and visualize causes of some fault event by expanding a fault event to its cause events hierarchically and making a tree diagram representing the entire structure of the problem. When a designer finds or encounters some problem during a product design and development process, it is an effective way o...

To address diversification of customer's sensitivity to perceive a product emotional quality, this paper proposes a design supporting method that quantifies the diverse customers' sensitivities. We apply the proposed method to outward design of cellular phones to show the effectiveness of the method. The result demonstrates that there are multiple...

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a method to analyze and visualize causes of some fault event by expanding a fault event to its cause events hierarchically and making a tree diagram representing the entire structure of the problem. When a designer finds or encounters some problem during a product design and development process, it is an effective way o...

Although many knowledge management techniques based on text expression have been developed, they are not necessarily sufficient for managing engineering design knowledge. In this paper, we propose quantity dimension indexing of design knowledge as a fundamental method for design knowledge management. Physical quantities describing physical phenomen...

We propose a new type of mock-up consisting of a transparent solid object, fabricated by stereolithography, with a small video camera embedded inside. By processing the video image of the object surface taken from the inside in real time, operation data of the mock-up (e.g., when interfaces such as buttons and dials are operated by the users) and u...

To respond to increasingly diversifying customer's needs of a product, it has become important to acquire potential viewpoints of the customer's criteria for product evaluation in the design process. Furthermore, emotional needs, such as design styling and user-friendliness, have become increasingly important for a differentiation strategy in a mar...

This paper proposes a quantification method of a product’s emotional quality, which we call kansei quality, with attention paid to its diversity to support the affective design. The customer’s sensitivity towards such a quality differs from person to person due to perception gaps and ambiguity. The proposed method helps the designer to grasp such d...

The aesthetics of a product’s shape has become an important factor to increase the value of mature products. However, such emotional quality regarding the customer’s need is difficult to capture due to its subjectivity. To address this issue, we have previously proposed shape generation methods that help the customers to externalize their image of...

We propose a new type of mock-up consisting of a transparent solid object, fabricated by stereolithography, with a small video camera embedded inside. By processing the video image of the object surface taken from the inside in real time, operation data of the mock-up (e.g., when interfaces such as buttons and dials are operated by the users) and u...

To respond recent diversifying customer's needs of a product, one of the most vital work is to figure out customer's evaluation criterion of a product. Furthermore, emotional needs such as styling and user-friendliness, which is difficult to quantify, have been important factors with multitude of products having similar performance. Truly effective...

In the process of design, contributions of various factors such as forms, colors and materials to a product impression are analyzed by kansei (i.e., feeling, emotion and sensitivity) evaluation experiments to obtai