Natural Language Processing in-and-for Design Research
This is an incremental review paper for design researchers, synthesizing existing NLP applications in design.
The paper reviews 223 articles from 1991 to present to summarize how Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques support the design process, identifying gaps and proposing future directions.
We review the scholarly contributions that utilise Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to support the design process. Using a heuristic approach, we gathered 223 articles that are published in 32 journals within the period 1991-present. We present state-of-the-art NLP in-and-for design research by reviewing these articles according to the type of natural language text sources: internal reports, design concepts, discourse transcripts, technical publications, consumer opinions, and others. Upon summarizing and identifying the gaps in these contributions, we utilise an existing design innovation framework to identify the applications that are currently being supported by NLP. We then propose a few methodological and theoretical directions for future NLP in-and-for design research.