Function recommender system for product planning and design

Functions play a critical role in bridging intangible user needs and physical design parameters. Recommender systems ubiquitously exist in eCommerce to recommend new products to a target user. However, in most cases, the main purpose for users to acquire a product is to gain its functionality rather than owning its physical embodiment. Inspired by existing recommender systems for eCommerce, this paper presents a function recommender system for product planning and design, which represents a revolutionizing paradigm of recommending new functions to a product. A systemic function recommendation process is elaborated, and a case study is presented to showcase practical applications.