Introduction Optimal mixtures design is considered a significant challenge in many industries, especially in the manufacturing of formulated consumer products. Due to the infinite number of possible combinations of ingredients and their corresponding concentrations, an important issue is how to reduce the search space during early stages to accelerate the design process, using the available knowledge. Aside from the most relevant physicochemical properties of the product, it is essential to account for the product performance as perceived by the consumer. The fulfillment of this goal requires more significant involvement of the user needs into the product design inputs.1
Typically, the design process of formulated consumer products corresponds to an iterative succession of 4 steps, as shown in Figure 1.2,3 Within this process, the marketing team usually is responsible for the first two steps (1 and 2) concerning the consumer assessment phase, where the information on the user needs is translated into basic functional specifications of the product.2,4