  Finding analogical inspirations in distant domains is a powerful way of
solving problems. However, as the number of inspirations that could be matched
and the dimensions on which that matching could occur grow, it becomes
challenging for designers to find inspirations relevant to their needs.
Furthermore, designers are often interested in exploring specific aspects of a
product-- for example, one designer might be interested in improving the
brewing capability of an outdoor coffee maker, while another might wish to
optimize for portability. In this paper we introduce a novel system for
targeting analogical search for specific needs. Specifically, we contribute a
novel analogical search engine for expressing and abstracting specific design
needs that returns more distant yet relevant inspirations than alternate
approaches.
