Metaphors For Designing Modern Products with New Meanings from Cultural Art Features: Insights from Thailand

Abstract

A metaphor is a valuable tool for creative design. It assists designers in comprehending design concepts by putting them next to things they already know. To generate creative ideas from metaphors, designers have to think creatively.Based on the metaphor concept, this study proposes a conceptual framework as a graphical representation tool for design strategy to help designers analyze and incorporate appearance, behavior, and meanings from cultural art features into modern products. Translation, transformation, and design activity processes were performed to demonstrate how this conceptual approach of a case study could reach all three cultural levels: physical appearance of the outer level, usability or behavior of the middle level, and new meanings of the inner level embedded into modern products.