This work seeks to introduce and evaluate effects of a novel method for designing prototyping strategies. This newly developed heuristics-based tool guides designers in planning a prototyping strategy based on answers to Likert-scale questions that embody empirically validated heuristics. We created this tool to augment prior work in the development of prototyping planning methods. The new tool guides designers through six critical prototype strategy choices: (1) How many concepts should be prototyped? (2) How many iterations of a concept should be built? (3) Should the prototype be virtual or physical? (4) Should subsystems be isolated? (5) Should the prototype be scaled? (6) Should the design requirements be temporarily relaxed? We assessed the new planning tool in two environments: (1) a controlled experiment in which volunteers completed a prototyping design challenge, and (2) a capstone design class with a diverse range of open-ended sponsored design projects. In both cases, students received training for the method and then employed it in their own efforts. In our study the new tool caused student teams to employ significantly more efficient and effective prototyping strategies, such as prototyping early and often. The results indicate a higher functional performance of prototypes from groups using the new planning tool compared to control groups. This paper describes the new prototyping strategy planning tool, details both sets of experiments, and discusses results.
Shah’s metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness have been used extensively by the engineering design community to quantify the value of designed concepts. Shah measures novelty as the infrequency of an idea relative to a set of ideas. Vargas-Hernandez extended this novelty metric using partial genealogy trees to consider the frequency of ideas that share the same working principle. These genealogy trees capture differences between individual ideas organized by the following levels of abstraction: physical principle, working principle, and embodiment. Shah’s and Vargas-Hernandez’s metrics both require that all ideas be described at the lowest level (embodiment). This approach excludes ideas that are described at higher levels of abstraction. This paper proposes a new novelty metric that extends Vargas Hernandez’s metrics by including the higher levels of the genealogy trees, allowing abstract ideas to be properly evaluated. This paper compares the newly proposed novelty metric to Shah’s and Vargas Hernandez’s metrics using data from a previous study. The study required participants to perform problem-solving tasks in which they submitted a textual list of ideas for how to solve general day-to-day problems. The proposed novelty metric addresses limitations of the previous metrics when applied to the abstract ideas in the data set and meets established metric requirements. The proposed metric also broadens Shah’s metric in a similar manner as Vargas Hernandez but extends it to capture the entire genealogy tree rather than a subset of the tree.
We present a framework for understanding product usage context and its impact upon customer needs and product preferences. We conduct customer interviews with two sets of representative products from the functional families of "mobile lighting" and "food boiling" products. Customer interviews lead to identification and characterization of distinct product usage contexts. Interactive surveys measuring customer product choice support the hypothesis that customer product preferences differ for each usage context identified. Further analysis shows that attributes of these chosen products are related to factors of the usage context (e.g. mass is related to transportation mode). These results demonstrate that valuable insight for product design is available through an understanding of usage context, and future work will refine and test methods to formally bring contextual information to bear on product design. These capabilities will be especially important for contexts in which needs assessment has traditionally been difficult, such as with latent needs and frontier design environments.
His objective is to practice and promote engineering as a serving profession. Focus areas include remote power generation, design methods for frontier environments, enhanced engineering learning, and assistive devices for persons with disabilities. Contact:
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