Too many attributes!: diminishing the cognitive load of metaphor generation in product design

Many successful products result from a creative ideation process guided by the use of metaphors. Metaphors are used to embed meaning or values in a final product, or as a tool to structure design problems and generate creative solutions. In the former case, the source of inspiration is selected because it naturally exhibits the required traits, whereas, in the latter, the source might be randomly chosen. In both cases, the final result is achieved by transferring one or more attributes from the source to the target product. Given that the number of transferrable attributes is very high compared to the capacity of human’s working memory, how can we ensure that we are exploring all possible solutions? Are generated metaphors better when all options are in plain sight? In this paper we describe preliminary results drawn from the use of a tool aimed at facilitating metaphor generation for product concepts.