In recent years, intelligent design technology that is based on interactive evolutionary algorithms, namely interactive evolutionary design (IED) systems, has received extensive attention in the computer science, design, and other related literature. However, due to the complexity of design problems and the limitation of human cognitive ability, IED faces several challenges in actual design applications. With the aim to address these problems in the IED, this paper deconstructs the IED of the product styling from the perspective of the cognitive association of the users, and proposes a corresponding cognitive intervention method that is based on the association of information. We built databases of the perceptual evaluation results of typical cases and coded profiles of the typical cases, combined with the corresponding interaction process, to improve the efficiency of creating associations between dissimilar information in the early stages of evolution. Besides, in order to simplify the process of creating associations between similar information, this paper proposes a clustering model of similar information based on explicit and implicit distances. The proposed method is then applied to the evolutionary design of an SUV. The experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the initial and total evaluation time. Therefore, the proposed method improves users’ ability to understand the complex design tasks of IED for product styling, optimizing the interactive evaluation process by guiding designers to efficiently create the cognitive association of information, and increases the effectiveness of adopting IED to solve actual design problems about product styling.

Interactive genetic algorithms have been used in a wide variety of applications and extensively developed to facilitate the personalization and customization of products for users. However, the ambiguity effect or cognitive ambiguity of users during the product customization process will affect the effects of the final customized product. Here, we first deconstructed the ambiguity effect into cognitive ambiguity during early decision-making and that during the decision-making process. A spatial mapping strategy that involves “text-image-symbol” and a clustering strategy were then proposed to mitigate cognitive ambiguity in the two different stages, respectively. Then, a specific application example—“Chinese vase design” was studied. Based on the proposed strategy and interactive genetic algorithm, a prototype of computer-aided design system for product modeling was developed by MATLAB software. Then, 10 users were invited to experiment at three different cases (not using the proposed strategy, using spatial mapping strategy, using spatial mapping strategy and scheme clustering strategy). The experiment results have verified that the spatial mapping strategy was efficient to solve cognitive ambiguity during early decision-making, and clustering strategy was efficient to solve cognitive ambiguity during the decision-making process.

：The thinking fixation is a problem that designers face frequently in the product form design. In orderly design activities, it is a question which needs to be considered whether adopt thinking fixation strategy deliberately or restrain it. Firstly, after analyzing the processes and characteristics of design thinking in product form design, it is refined as four key factors which affect the thinking curing, such as: innovation requirement, design problem attribute, designer's preference and design stimulus. Secondly, a design thinking fixation strategy model of product form design is set up based on the mapping process from the problem domain to the feature domain, and the content, location and relationship of key elements in the mapping process are pointed out. It is also stated the connection between each mapping stage and thinking fixation. Besides, the deliberate thinking fixation strategy depends on the continuous supplement of the set of frame knowledge and bias, and the screening based on the content of concrete issue and creative demand. The restrained thinking fixation strategy depends on the content, expression and location of the starting information in design stimulation. Finally, the thinking fixation strategy model is applied to an actual product design project, and a qualitative evaluation of thinking strategy and design results are given. The results show that it can improve the efficiency of product form design with the effective utilization of thinking fixation strategy deliberately or restrain it.

As to improve the evaluation ability of product sculpt design case, the combination of knowledge based (KB) and case based (CB) framework is presented. By researching industrial design problem-solve field knowledge, capturing evaluation factors and their weight quotients, quantifying the evaluation of fussy information, it is presented a framework of KB product evaluation system. The image scale 3D space is under construction through experiments with the image orientation of products. According to the spatial distance of the Euclidian, some descriptive comments will be made judging from the relationship between the design case and the classical market cases. So, a formalized, scientific gist of reasoning decision-making is presented for product design.