Affordances in Product Architecture: Linking Technical Functions and Users’ Tasks

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano B. Galvao ◽  
Keiichi Sato
Keyword(s):  
Close Relationships ◽  
Task Design ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Design Matrix ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Product Attributes ◽  
Technical Functions ◽  
Architecture Generation ◽  
User Tasks

Developing usable and desirable products requires an understanding of how users build close relationships with objects and how these relationships can be controlled by developers. This paper discusses the importance of the concept of affordances as an instrument useful for understanding the relationships between technical functions and user tasks. The approach introduces a Function-Task Design Matrix to link technical functions with user tasks and to capture relevant affordance-level requirements throughout the product architecture generation. Functional and Operational Affordance levels are introduced to help determine the product attributes necessary to optimize the ease with which users can undertake technical functions. The paper uses functional language, focusing attention towards the use of the product, rather then merely its workings. The tools for describing affordances are described first, followed by a step-by-step description of how they can be used to improve decisions during product architecture generation. The mechanism is illustrated in a case study on a kitchen appliance.

scholarly journals Profile of Vocabulary Learning of Vocabulary Masters of STIMIK Amikom and ABA Sinema Yogyakarta

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marita Nurharjanti ◽  
Imam Ghozali
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Adult Students ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Private Universities ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Authentic Material ◽  
Learning English

Vocabulary mastery is one of the goals of language learning. Vocabulary is very important because it is one of the most functional language elements needed to perform communication. This paper reports a case study on vocabulary learning by a group of adult students learning English in two different universities. The objective of this research is to describe the profile of the vocabulary learning of the ten best vocabulary masters in two private universities. The research involved 5 students from STMIK Amikom and 5 students from ABA Sinema; both are in Yogyakarta. Those participants were chosen based three criteria; their cognitive, affective and psychomotor factors. The findings show that the masters develope varying degree of their receptive as well as the productive skills; second, the masters learn from authentic material because it is more effective; third, in order to produce a better translation, the vocabulary masters review results of their internet-based translation due to their lack of grammatical use.

HOME: House Of Modular Enhancement—a Tool for Modular Product Redesign

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sand ◽  
P. Gu ◽  
G. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Lead Time ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Overall Design ◽  
System A ◽  
Modular Product ◽  
Design And Manufacturing

Product modularization aims to improve the overall design, manufacturing, operational, and post-retirement characteristics of products by designing or redesigning the product architectures. A successful modular product can assist the reconfiguration of products, while reducing the lead-time of design and manufacturing and improving the ability for upgrading, maintenance, customization and recycling. This paper presents a new modular design method called the House Of Modular Enhancement (HOME) for product redesign. Information from various aspects of the product design, including functional requirements, product architecture and life cycle requirements, is incorporated in the method to help ensure that a modularized product would achieve the objectives. The HOME method has been implemented in a software system. A case study will be presented to illustrate the HOME method and the software.

What Is It Like to Be a Bot?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Wittkower
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Structural Requirement ◽  
User Experiences ◽  
Central Case ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
Technical Functions ◽  
Mental Contents

This chapter seeks to further develop, define, and differentiate human-technics alterity relations within postphenomenological philosophy of technology. A central case study of the Alexa digital assistant establishes that digital assistants require the adoption of the intentional stance, and illustrates that this structural requirement is different from anthropomorphic projection of mindedness onto technical objects. Human-technics alterity relations based on projection are then more generally differentiated from human-technics alterity relations based on actual encoded pseudo-mental contents, where there are matters of fact that directly correspond to user conceptualizations of “intentions” or “knowledge” in technical systems or objects. Finally, functions and user benefits to different alterity relations are explored, establishing that there is a meaningful set of cases where the projection of a mind in human-technics alterity relations positively impacts technical functions and user experiences.

Task design and assignment of full-text generation on mass Chinese historical archives in digital humanities

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-286
Author(s):  
Jihong Liang ◽  
Hao Wang ◽  
Xiaojing Li
Keyword(s):  
Full Text ◽  
Character Recognition ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Task Design ◽  
Text Generation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Effective Design

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the task design and assignment of full-text generation on mass Chinese historical archives (CHAs) by crowdsourcing, with special attention paid to how to best divide full-text generation tasks into smaller ones assigned to crowdsourced volunteers and to improve the digitization of mass CHAs and the data-oriented processing of the digital humanities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper starts from the complexities of character recognition of mass CHAs, takes Sheng Xuanhuai archives crowdsourcing project of Shanghai Library as a case study, and makes use of the theories of archival science, including diplomatics of Chinese archival documents, and the historical approach of Chinese archival traditions as the theoretical basis and analysis methods. The results are generated through the comprehensive research.FindingsThis paper points out that volunteer tasks of full-text generation include transcription, punctuation, proofreading, metadata description, segmentation, and attribute annotation in digital humanities and provides a metadata element set for volunteers to use in creating or revising metadata descriptions and also provides an attribute tag set. The two sets can be used across the humanities to construct overall observations about texts and the archives of which they are a part. Along these lines, this paper presents significant insights for application in outlining the principles, methods, activities, and procedures of crowdsourced full-text generation for mass CHAs.Originality/valueThis study is the first to explore and identify the effective design and allocation of tasks for crowdsourced volunteers completing full-text generation on CHAs in digital humanities.

Patterns for Designing Agent-Based E-Business Systems

2009 ◽  
pp. 2367-2388
Author(s):  
Michael Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Agent Technology ◽  
Online Auction ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Business Systems ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Software Applications ◽  
Architectural Patterns ◽  
User Tasks

Agents are rapidly emerging as a new paradigm for developing software applications. They are being used in an increasing variety of applications, ranging from relatively small systems such as assistants to large, open, mission-critical systems like electronic marketplaces. One of the most promising areas of applications for agent technology is e-business. In this chapter, we describe a group of architectural patterns for agent-based e-business systems. These patterns relate to front-end e-business activities that involve interaction with the user, and delegation of user tasks to agents. Patterns capture well-proven, common solutions, and guide developers through the process of designing systems. This chapter should be of interest to designers of e-business systems using agent technology. The description of the patterns is followed by the case study of an online auction system to which the patterns have been applied.

Augmenting UML to Support the Design and Evolution of User Interfaces

2011 ◽  
pp. 275-285
Author(s):  
Chris Scogings ◽  
Chris Phillips
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Interface Modeling ◽  
Dialogue Structure ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
User Tasks ◽  
High Level

The primary focus in UML has been on support for the design and implementation of the software comprising the underlying system. Very little support is provided for the design or evolution of the user interface. This chapter commences with a brief review of UML and its support for user interface modeling. Lean Cuisine+, a notation capable of modeling both dialogue structure and high-level user tasks, is described. It is shown through a case study that Lean Cuisine+ can be used to augment UML and provide the user interface support that is currently lacking.

A product architecture-based tool for bioinspired function-sharing

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devesh Bhasin ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams ◽  
Astrid Layton
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Biological Function ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Biological Structures ◽  
Structure Tree ◽  
Single Structure ◽  
Function Sharing ◽  
Architectural Characteristics

Abstract In this work, we show that bioinspired function-sharing can be effectively applied in engineering design by abstracting and emulating the product architecture of biological systems that exhibit function-sharing. Systems that leverage function-sharing enable multiple functions to be performed by a single structure. Billions of years of evolution has led to the development of function-sharing adaptations in biological systems. Currently, engineers leverage biological function-sharing by imitating serendipitously encountered biological structures. As a result, utilizing bioinspired function-sharing remains limited to some specific engineering problems. To overcome this limitation, we propose the Function-Behavior-Structure tree as a tool to simultaneously abstract both biological adaptations and the product architecture of biological systems. The tool uses information from an existing bioinspired design abstraction tool and an existing product architecture representation tool. A case study demonstrates the tool's ability to abstract the product architectural characteristics of function-sharing biological systems. The abstracted product architectural characteristics are then shown to facilitate problem-driven bioinspiration of function-sharing. The availability of a problem-driven approach may reduce the need to imitate biological structures to leverage biological function-sharing in engineering design. This work is a step forward in analyzing biological product architectures to inspire engineering design.

Automatic Calculation of Product Architecture Metrics Within a Solid Modeler

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Kevin Line ◽  
Mark W. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Joint Strength ◽  
Solid Modeling ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Solid Modeler ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Important Design ◽  
Program File

Abstract The architecture of a product is defined as the scheme in which functions are mapped to physical components. Architecture has a strong impact on how a product satisfies design objectives. There are several ways to measure architecture, and one is implemented into a solid modeling program, that will do the quantification automatically. The software used is the I-DEAS solid modeling package, for which an internal program file was created to automatically perform the calculations. This program works by counting the parts that the user has created, then uses an internal I-DEAS function to find all of the joined parts. The program counts the joints and then prompts the user for the strength of each joint. With this information, an adjusted parts connectivity and average joint strength is calculated and can be used to evaluate the degree to which the architecture of a product is either integral or modular. Four case studies are presented that were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Three of these yielded excellent results, but the final case study failed because of model input problems. With further development this program could be a very important design tool in the future.

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