  Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significant potential for product design: AI
can check technical and non-technical constraints on products, it can support a
quick design of new product variants and new AI methods may also support
creativity. But currently product design and AI are separate communities
fostering different terms and theories. This makes a mapping of AI approaches
to product design needs difficult and prevents new solutions. As a solution,
this paper first clarifies important terms and concepts for the
interdisciplinary domain of AI methods in product design. A key contribution of
this paper is a new classification of design problems using the four
characteristics decomposability, inter-dependencies, innovation and creativity.
Definitions of these concepts are given where they are lacking. Early mappings
of these concepts to AI solutions are sketched and verified using design
examples. The importance of creativity in product design and a corresponding
gap in AI is pointed out for future research.
