Informality of design requirements is a problem, especially in distributed design teams, because it impacts upon the ability of a team to communicate. Since design requirements drive the design process, their miscommunication results in serious problems; for example, new products that do not align with the needs of the range of stakeholders to whom they are targeted. This, in turn, has a detrimental impact on traditional business performance indicators, such as market share, volume of sales, and profit. The research reported in this paper explored the applicability of requirements engineering and management techniques, traditionally used in the development of software-intensive systems, to the development of electromechanical consumer products. The motivational rationale traceability matrix (MoRal™) is introduced as a means to support the initial analysis of stakeholder needs and attributes, and the derivation of corresponding design requirements. The applicability of MoRalTM is demonstrated through application to a power solution case study. In this instance, the MoRalTM proved to be a powerful means of supporting the derivation of design requirements that are aligned with customer and other stakeholder needs, and are traceable to stakeholder intents.
The significant role of reflection in sustaining the quality of learning and teaching (L&T) activities at high levels has been widely acknowledged in literature. Reflection has been identified as a key factor underpinning both successful learning by students and successful continuing professional development by their teaching staff in higher education. This study focuses on aspects associated with the individual reflection practice of teaching staff. It is proposed and maintained that the establishment of systematic reflection practice has a central role in enhancing knowledge management in design education. To this end, the consistency and coherence, in which key perspectives of reflection are considered and evidenced by teaching staff, need to be both ensured and sustained. Reflection Space is introduced as an approach to support the establishment of systematic 1 , evidenced 2 , and traceable reflection practice. It is a means of representing the nature, or perspectives, of reflection required on L&T and it has been applied and evaluated to a number of L&T contexts. An application of Reflection Space is demonstrated through a case study that dealt with the development of a Design Studio module delivered to Year 2 Product Design students. Evaluation of the application has shown that use of Reflection Space during the reflection phase of L&T activities can ensure that key reflective perspectives of L&T have been considered and evidenced. As a result, actions for the enhancement and/or improvement of the deployed L&T activities can be determined in a systematic, evidenced, and traceable manner.
This paper reports results of research into the engineering design of consumer electromechanical products. The research dealt with the derivation of design requirements from stakeholder needs. An approach based on principles of systems engineering was developed, applied and evaluated through a number of case studies that were carried out in three industrial domains. The evaluation showed that the approach can significantly improve the quality of product designs. The revision of the expressed stakeholder requirements and the expression of stakeholder requirements as stakeholder needs and stakeholder attributes were found to be key factors towards the improvement of product designs. It is recognised that there are many difficulties associated with the identification of stakeholder needs for both existing and new products. However, given a need, benefits can be gained from providing information to support traceability between design parameters, design requirements, stakeholder attributes and stakeholder needs; such traceability is a key enabler to downstream integration management.
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