Iterative product design through group opinion evolution

More and more industrial products have begun to adopt iterative design modes. Opinions collected from all sides in each round of iterations are used as bases to make products that are able to capture the changes of customer demand dynamically and to respond to these changes in a timely manner. In this context, it becomes important for product designers and manufacturers to study the evolution of opinions as well as the product scheme along with design iteration to determine its regularity. This paper integrates the Hegselmann–Krause model into product improvement process, and develops a dynamic model from the view of opinion dynamics. The dynamic model simultaneously converges the evolution of customers' opinions, professional designers' opinions and the product scheme. The paper also analyses the interaction mechanism among different opinions as well as the mechanism between opinions and the product scheme. The experimental results determine that the product scheme, customers' opinions and professional designers' opinions can demonstrate differently but regular evolution patterns along with the design iteration according to the difference in confidence intervals or the difference caused by tending to adopt a more customer-driven design strategy or a more professional designer-driven design strategy. Finally, reasonable suggestions are provided to help manufacturers make product design strategies.