GPSdesign: Integrating Generative AI with Problem-Solution Co-Evolution Network to Support Product Conceptual Design

In conceptual design, designers often face the challenge of navigating vast design spaces to define ambiguous problems and generate feasible solutions. Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offer new opportunities to support this process. However, formative research revealed that designers struggle to simultaneously advance both problem and solution spaces when using GenAI in conceptual design, leading to increased communication load and diminished solution practicality. This study explores the integration of GenAI with the problem-solution co-evolution model to facilitate the construction of a structured design space. We propose a GenAI-supported method for expanding and evaluating the design space and developed the GPSdesign system based on this method. Compared with a baseline system, GPSdesign fosters greater design space divergence, retrospection, and structured construction, while improving design efficiency and solution quality.