A Systematic Function Recommendation Process for Data-Driven Product and Service Design

This paper presents a systematic function recommendation process (FRP) to recommend new functions to an existing product and service. Function plays a vital role in mapping user needs to design parameters (DPs) under constraints. It is imperative for manufacturers to continuously equip an existing product/service with exciting new functions. Traditionally, functions are mostly formulated by experienced designers and senior managers based on their subjective experience, knowledge, creativity, and even heuristics. Nevertheless, against the sweeping trend of information explosion, it is increasingly inefficient and unproductive for designers to manually formulate functions. In e-commerce, recommendation systems (RS) are ubiquitously used to recommend new products to users. In this study, the practically viable recommendation approaches are integrated with the theoretically sound design methodologies to serve a new paradigm of recommending new functions to an existing product/service. The aim is to address the problem of how to estimate an unknown rating that a target user would give to a candidate function that is not carried by the target product/service yet. A systematic function → product recommendation process is prescribed, followed by a detailed case study. It is indicated that practically meaningful functional recommendations (FRs) can indeed by generated through the proposed FRP.