Deep Neural Networks for New Product Form Design

Neural Networks (NNs) are non-linear models and are widely used to model complex relationships, thus being well suited to formulate the product design process for matching design form elements to consumers’ affective preferences. In this paper, we construct 36 deep NN models, using one to four hidden layers with three different dropout ratios and three widely used rules for determining the number of neurons in the hidden layer(s). As a result of extensive experiments, the NN model using one hidden layer with 140 hidden neurons has the highest predicting accuracy rate (80%) and is used to help product designers determine the optimal form combination for new fragrance bottle design.