The objective of the proposed research is to develop a design methodology to support the design of situated engineering artifacts. In this research, situatedness refers to the context in which the product is used. This design framework will capture both function and affordance in the design process. Function-based design methods represent the conversion of energy, materials, and information into an abstract solution-neutral product representation that facilitates storage and retrieval of potential design components in a design repository. Affordance-based design methods focus on modeling interactions between users, the environment and the product. Currently, no design repository exists to support affordance-based design. Combining these two approaches will lead to a design methodology that overcomes limitations of each method, resulting in a unique new approach to product design that incorporates both function and affordance. A proof-of-concept repository will be developed to support this combined design method. A testbed for demonstration and validation will be created using design problems supplied by local industry.
If successful, the results from this research will provide a formalized approach that integrates aspects of mechanical engineering design and industrial and product design. Traditionally, these disciplines are largely decoupled during the development of technical systems. Graduate and undergraduate mechanical engineering students will greatly benefit through course work and research that integrates multiple design disciplines, including industrial design, human factors analysis, art and architecture. Specifically, mechanical engineering students will work closely with other disciplines to understand and formalize these artifact interactions. Through this research, students will have the opportunity to interact with local design-manufacturing firms to explore design problems. Example applications include the design of industrial packaging machines, automobile subsystems, and consumer power tools. The results of this research will be disseminated through a variety of channels including academic and technical conferences.
Explanation of Results The PI’s and graduate student researchers have successfully addressed the overarching research objectives initially identified in this proposal and formulated several additional research areas in the area of engineering design. Specifically, the research group has provided a solid foundation to modeling and analyzing the situatedness of a product in conceptual design. Situatedness, in this context, is defined as how a product is used, the users of the product, and the interactions between the product, the user, other products, and the environment. Situatedness provides a larger scope and context that must be considered when designing a product over the traditional view of engineering function modeling. (1) Formalized a model and a method for capturing active product functions, product-product interactions, product-environment interactions, and product-user interactions. The different types of interactions as well as the activities performed by the user are modeled. A graphical modeling technique and template are developed to aid in the documentation, modeling, archival, and communication of situatedness for a product. Several models are developed and archived for several products. These models are developed for products that have been modeled in the past, enabling a larger verification and text suite of models. (2) Developed training modules and material on modeling product situatedness. This material complements other efforts, including the Systems Modeling Language, Functional Modeling, Human Centered Design Approaches, and User Activity Modeling. However, these efforts have been newly integrated to the Mechanical Design Process and have not been fully developed or fully validated. The material developed in this research provides detailed instructions, examples, and guidelines on how to model the situatedness of a product. The material is used for training user study participants to aid in conceptual design. While all the student participants are presented with the same material, the competency of each student is not verified. The material was presented to approximately 150 student participants, shared with several design researchers and design practitioners. (3) Formulated and completed a user study to qualitatively and quantitatively ascertain how different modeling approaches and methods for conceptual design impact the generation of design ideas and concepts. Two different user studies were completed using different participants. In this study, groups of students were asked to user several different models including a function model and a situatedness model to aid in concept generation. In addition, a baseline group was established in which students were tasked with addressing the design problem with no model. This, from the authors review, has not been done in previous research. (4) Defined a conformance metric for assessing tool usage in conceptual design and completed a user study. The conformance metric is used to quantitatively assess the use of design tools to perform a design task. In this research, the conformance metric is used to identify if different design models are utilized to aid the concept generation process. Four different groups are evaluated, included in these four is a baseline group in which no model is used. The conformance metric, in general, can be used to evaluate the use of any design tool and will provide the baseline to validate these tools. In this research, conformance results indicated that situatedness graphical model developed and proposed in this research did not have a high degree of conformance. Statement of Intellectual Merit The intellectual merit of the research is the formalization of a model of product situatedness AND a rigorous approach to validate the proposed model. This research is a significant department from function-based approaches in design texts. The results from this work indicate that situatedness is helpful in conceptual design activities, but additional work is required on the graphical model. Broader Impact of the Results The results from the research have been disseminated in several traditional paths including presentation at several international conferences and journal. Further, several undergraduate and graduate students have participated in the development of the model, the execution of the user studies, and the formalization of product situatedness. Further, a supplementary research grant was awarded to broaden participation. From a techincal perspective, the research findings impact the way in which mechanical engineers approach product design to include both functional and human centered design knowledge during concept generation. Conclusions The research funding (May 2008 to August 2012) has results in several interesting results that have been disseminated to the design community and practicing engineers. The primary areas of contribution of this work lie in (1) functional decomposition and modeling, and (2) identification of interactions in product design, (3) a formal representation and analysis of engineering requirements., (4) formal analysis of engineering requirements, and (5) a validation of function and interaction based design tools. The research findings have been disseminated through normal channels included international conferences, journals, and complementary projects with industry partners.
