Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Academic Research in Science, Technology and Engineering
Year: 2025
DOI:
[PDF]
Morphological Comparison Between Two Model Groups of The Same Product Family Belonging to Different Price Levels
Miguel-Ángel Artacho-Ramírez, Xiangyu, Zou, Elena Mulet-Escrig, and José-Manuel Arrufat-Álvarez
ABSTRACT:
The relationship between aesthetically pleasing product forms and their sales success has long been analysed in industrial design. However, the link between product form and market positioning has attracted less attention. This study analyses the differences between the form of product models within the same product family, classified into high-end and mid-range products according to their price. Thirty 3D dining chairs files from five furniture brands were collected. Using the Product Phenetics approach and the morphological analysis software ProPheTA, the chairs in each group were converted into voxel-based models, aligned, and overlapped to obtain two product design spaces: the high-end product design space (HPDS) and the mid-range product design space (MPDS). The HPDS and MPDS were divided into three subspaces: backrest, seating, and legs. The volume, intersection and uniqueness ratios of the HPDS, MPDS, and subspaces were calculated to compare their spatial distribution. The results showed that HPDS is larger and has twice the morphological diversity of MPDS. As for the subspaces, the seating is the one in which most volume is shared by both design spaces, followed by backrests and legs, where there is more morphological diversity for the two groups. In the seating subspace, the HPDS reached 36% uniqueness morphology, whereas the MPDS scarcely reached 7% novelty. Thus, Product Phenetics identified morphological differences between products of the same family and different price, defining subspaces where making changes can represent an innovation and providing an efficient way to analyse product morphology from the early stages of product design.
keywords: Conceptual Design, Design Space, Morphological analysis, Product Phenetics, Spatial Distribution