Abstract: Disclosed herein are a product design process and apparatus for quickly and easily defining an optimal product concept capable of conveying a high degree of customer satisfaction. In the process of the present invention, wants and needs information is analyzed, and, based on the analyzed wants and needs information, weighting is carried out with respect to evaluation indices which have been previously stored in a storage device and which are quantitative measures of the degree to which the user is likely to perceive a benefit latent in the product under consideration and inherent in the wants and needs information to have been achieved, an evaluation index having the highest weighting among a plurality of weighted evaluation indices is selected as a primary evaluation index and a product design concept for which the primary evaluation index selected is a maximum or minimum is defined.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are a product design process and apparatus for quickly and easily defining an optimal product concept capable of conveying a high degree of customer satisfaction, and for rapidly getting to market with a product having a high degree of market competitiveness.