Semantic Annotation of Digital Engineering Resources for Multidisciplinary Design Collaboration

Author(s):  
Q. Z. Yang ◽  
Y. Zhang ◽  
C. Y. Miao ◽  
Z. Q. Shen

This paper introduces an ontology-based approach to annotating semantics of digital engineering resources. The aim is to enhance design knowledge sharing through semantic annotation to support streamlined collaboration in multidisciplinary consumer product development. Two issues are focused: how to specify the meaning of annotations with design ontology to ensure sharability of the annotation content; and how to represent annotations in neutral encoding formats to seek mutual understanding of the annotated semantics across multidisciplinary design teams and systems. Two use scenarios of semantic annotations in multidisciplinary design of consumer products are illustrated in the paper.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1529-1536
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Dastmalchi ◽  
Bimal Balakrishnan ◽  
Danielle Oprean

AbstractTeam collaboration is a critical necessity of the modern-day engineering design profession. This is no surprise given that teams typically possess more task-relevant skills and knowledge than individuals (Levine & Choi, 2004). Advancements in digital media provide new opportunities for collaboration across the design lifecycle. However, early stages of the design process still pose challenges to digitally mediated design collaboration due to greater representational abstraction and the presence of multiple modalities for design ideation. Usually, design teams spend a substantial amount of time generating a broad set of ideas that can lead them to a wide range of design solutions during the ideation phase. However, sooner or later, teams should narrow down their vision for a final solution. What factors influence team members to eliminate or select an idea? Our study is an attempt to demonstrate some examples of this challenge. By drawing on research in team cognition, particularly the concept of transactive memory system (TMS) we studied a design teams' communication and media use during the ideation phase. The goal was to see if media type and communication modes can predict a team's decisions on selecting and eliminating ideas.


Author(s):  
Matt R. Bohm ◽  
Karl R. Haapala ◽  
Kerry Poppa ◽  
Robert B. Stone ◽  
Irem Y. Tumer

This paper describes efforts taken to further transition life cycle analysis techniques from the latter, more detailed phases of design, to the early-on conceptual phase of product development. By using modern design methodologies such as automated concept generation and an archive of product design knowledge, known as the Design Repository, virtual concepts are created and specified. Streamlined life cycle analysis techniques are then used to determine the environmental impacts of the virtual concepts. As a means to benchmark the virtual results, analogous real-life products that have functional and component similarities are identified. The identified products are then scrutinized to determine their material composition and manufacturing attributes in order to perform an additional round of life cycle analysis for the actual products. The results of this research show that enough information exists within the conceptual phase of design (utilizing the Design Repository) to reasonably predict the relative environmental impacts of actual products based on virtual concepts.


CoDesign ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Badke-Schaub ◽  
Andre Neumann ◽  
Kristina Lauche ◽  
Susan Mohammed

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Jaccard ◽  
Laurent Suppan ◽  
Félicia Bielser

BACKGROUND Multidisciplinary collaboration is essential to the successful development of serious games, albeit difficult to achieve. The co.LAB serious game design framework was created to support collaboration within serious game multidisciplinary design teams. Its use has not yet been validated in a naturalistic context. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to perform a first assessment of the impact of the co.LAB framework on collaboration within multidisciplinary teams during serious game design and development. METHODS This was a mixed-methods study based on two serious game design projects in which the co.LAB framework was used. The first phase was qualitative and carried out using a general inductive approach. To this end, all members of the first serious game project team who used the co.LAB framework were invited to take part in a focus group session (N=6). Results inferred from qualitative data were then used to define a quantitative instrument (questionnaire) which was designed according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys. Members of both project teams (N=11) were then asked to answer the questionnaire. Quantitative results were reported as median [Q1;Q3] and appropriate non-parametric tests used to assess for between group differences. Finally, results gathered through the qualitative and quantitative phases were integrated. RESULTS In both phases, the participation rate was 100%. Verbatim transcripts were classified into 4 high level themes: influence on collaborative dimensions; impact on project course, monitoring and efficiency; qualitative perceptions of the framework; and influence of team composition on the use of the framework. Accordingly, the web-based questionnaire was then developed according to Burhardt's seven dimensions of collaboration. In both projects, the co.LAB framework had a positive impact on most dimensions of collaboration during the multidisciplinary design and development of serious games. When all collaborative dimensions were aggregated, the overall impact of the framework was rated on a scale from "-42" to "+42" (very negative to very positive). The overall score was 23 [20;27], with no significant difference between groups (P=.58). Most respondents also believed that all serious game design teams should include a member possessing a significant expertise in serious game design frameworks to guide the development process. CONCLUSIONS The co.LAB framework has a positive impact on collaboration within serious game development teams. However, expert guidance seems necessary to maximize development efficiency. Whether such guidance can be provided by means of a collaborative web platform remains to be determined.


Author(s):  
Li Zhu ◽  
Barbara R. Barricelli ◽  
Claudia Iacob

As collaboration in creating software systems becomes more complex and frequent among multidisciplinary teams, finding new strategies to support this collaboration becomes crucial. The challenge is to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Moreover, future uses and issues cannot be completely anticipated at design time, and it is necessary to develop open-ended software environments that can be evolved and tailored in opportunistic ways to tackle co-evolution of users and systems. A conceptual meta-design model, the Hive-Mind Space (HMS) model, has been proposed to support multidisciplinary design teams’ collaboration and foster their situated innovation. The model provides localized habitable environments for diverse stakeholders and tools for them to tailor the system, allowing the co-evolution of systems and practices. The authors explore the possibility of utilizing boundary objects within the HMS model to facilitate the communication amongst stakeholders as well as their participation in the creative distributed design process. Two concrete case studies, a factory automation and the Valchiavenna Portal, demonstrate the implementation of the HMS model and provide a possible solution to overcome the complex, evolving and emerging nature of the collaborative design.


Author(s):  
Madelon Evers

In this chapter we analyse the link between multidisciplinary design and team learning, which, we argue, need to be supported in equal measure during Web design projects. We introduce a new approach to collaborative Web design, called the “Design and Learning Methodology,” as a way to support these two processes. The approach involves many stakeholders, including future website users, in design decision-making. It structures stakeholder participation through multidisciplinary design teams (MDTs). It uses professional facilitators to guide design and learning processes. Facilitation tools are drawn from a combination of action learning methods, which help MDTs reflect and act on new knowledge gained from design experiences, and human-centred design, which is an international protocol for achieving quality in interactive systems design (ISO 9000 series). Based on our research, we describe how facilitation of the process of learning from design contributes to continuous improvement in collaborative competencies needed for Web design.


Author(s):  
Shraddha Sangelkar ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams

One in every seven Americans has some form of disability. The number of people with disabilities is expected to increase, perhaps significantly, over the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, persons with a disability remain underserved by consumer products. Product designers fail to design universal products primarily due to a lack of knowledge, tools, and experience with universal design. Though challenges to complete access remain, the design of universal architectural systems reflects a better codification of methods, guidelines, and knowledge than available to universal product design. This article reports research efforts to transfer elements of the design knowledge and tools from universal architectural design to universal product design. The research uses the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health to formally describe user function, the Functional Basis to describe product function, and actionfunction diagrams as an analytical framework to explore the interaction between user activity, limitation, and product realization. The comparison of the universal and typical architectural systems reveal relevant design differences in specific parametric realization, morphology, and function. Of these differences, parametric was the most common with functional the least common. The user activities that most frequently result in a design change are reaching followed by maintaining body position. The comparison of architectural systems to consumer products noted a common trend of a functional design change made in result to the user activity of transferring oneself.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadayo Hirata ◽  
Mika Yasuoka ◽  
◽  

It is vital for cultural properties to be passed down between generations. Therefore, this study focuses on conservation techniques and discusses a system that provides appropriate automation to prevent the destruction of the value of cultural properties and conservation techniques. Manufacturing companies have improved productivity by rapidly replacing humans with machines. Because of this, the techniques of skilled persons who have gained experience with products over time by maintaining and repairing them are not being inherited by their successors. This has resulted in many manufacturers ceasing production or going out of business. Cultural properties are strongly associated with tradition and tacit knowledge. This makes it more difficult to maintain and reproduce them than common products. Thus, rather than a simple replacement of people and machines, support through applying automation that enhances human abilities is required. This study investigates Japan and a developed country, Denmark, in terms of conservation. On the basis of mutual understanding gained by investigating the state of mutual conservation in the two countries, we summarize the problems and efforts related to tacit knowledge sharing. We used a qualitative research method called ethnographical inquiry to find tacit knowledge underlying the techniques and influences of culture in Japan and Denmark. This study features empirical findings on the appropriate use of both automation that replaces humans with machines and automation that enhances human abilities.


1996 ◽  
Vol 05 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 131-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
WEIMING SHEN ◽  
JEAN-PAUL A. BARTHES

Real world engineering design projects require the cooperation of multidisciplinary design teams using sophisticated and powerful engineering tools. The individuals or the individual groups of the multidisciplinary design teams work in parallel and independently often for quite a long time with different tools located on various sites. In order to ensure the coordination of design activities in the different groups or the cooperation among the different tools, it is necessary to develop an efficient design environment. This paper discusses a distributed architecture for integrating such engineering tools in an open design environment, organized as a population of asynchronous cognitive agents. Before introducing the general architecture and the communication protocol, issues about an agent architecture and inter-agent communications are discussed. A prototype of such an environment with seven independent agents located in several workstations and microcomputers is then presented and demonstrated on an example of a small mechanical design.


Author(s):  
Sharad Oberoi ◽  
Susan Finger

For both student and professional design teams, the design and development process requires that collaborators build and retain knowledge through discussions, creating documents and sharing artifacts. Key to supporting these knowledge building activities is the development of an infrastructure that supports effective knowledge management. This paper presents the framework for an information management technology called DesignWebs, which assimilates the product structures from the evolving set of documents and discussions about an engineering artifact. A DesignWeb enables users to see evolving connections between concepts by using a navigable web-based interface that synthesizes the design knowledge from multiple sources of information.


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