Recreating a Database for Consumer Product Design

1984 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 441-445
Author(s):  
Daniel Formosa

Product evolution can often lead to degradation of product integrity rather than product improvement. This situation is the result of design programs run under unrealistic time schedules as consumer products are rushed to market, or of programs in which the potentials of product research efforts are underestimated. Design teams redesigning standard consumer products often are asked to work with less than sufficient information, and companies rely heavily on existing products for examples. A limited base of information leads to consumer products developed with incomplete or faulty design criteria, including criteria generated with arbitrary prioritization. Product research programs can be executed in reasonable time frames. Research can provide design teams with a product database, redirecting design efforts towards product improvement that accomodate a larger market share, or accomodate an identified market subgroup. Market advantages and increased sales can result. A methodology for formulating a product database is described.

1983 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 811-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Ryan

The increasing number of suits filed each year in courts arising from personal injuries while using consumer products indicates safety in design needs immediate evaluation. Human Factors engineers can make a great contribution in this area, especially by working more closely with traditional approaches to product design. Many engineers who are responsible for design, testing, and quality control have not had the benefit of training in ergonomics and psychology. As a result, many products sold in the marketplace today reflect too-high a risk acceptance for the ordinary consumer. This paper describes criteria for safe design of consumer products based on foreseeable and reasonable use of products. Sources of product standards relating to performance and safety are presented. Safe product design criteria based on risk, reliability, foreseeability, psychological considerations, and hazard warning are presented.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-273
Author(s):  
Mohd Qadafie Ibrahim ◽  
Fairuz Izzuddin Romli ◽  
Hassan Alli ◽  
Eris Elianddy Supeni ◽  
Hambali Arep

One of the primary issues with many product design and development processes today is having a good balance between the elements of form and function. While all products must be able to perform their intended functions, considerations of aesthetic features are also necessary for them to be accepted as a good quality design. However, most available design and development processes of consumer products have been more focused on achieving the functional aspects and have tended to treat the aesthetic aspects as less crucial features. This approach has led to many failed functional products in the market, as their physical design lacks appealing factors to targeted users. To improve the situation, a new product design and development framework is proposed in this study to better facilitate designers or engineers in creating an all-rounded quality product design. This new method is developed based on the findings from a survey conducted among engineering students, who are future product design engineers, in order to identify and also resolve issues with the current methods that they typically apply for their design tasks. All in all, the new proposed method is fundamentally tailored to offer a structured guide for developing beautiful and useful products based on a semantic design approach.


Author(s):  
Andrew Muir Wood ◽  
James Moultrie ◽  
Claudia Eckert

Companies are coming round to the idea that function and form are complimentary factors in improving the user’s experience of a product and competing in today’s saturated consumer goods markets. However, consumer perception of form is constantly changing, and this manifests itself in the evolving forms of the products that they adopt. From clothes to cameras to cars, change in form is inevitable, and design teams must account for these trends in their product design and development strategies. Through literature, semi-structured interviews with design and trend practitioners, and an archival case study of mobile phone evolution, the authors have developed theories about the continuities that occur in product forms over time, and the forces that can disrupt this behaviour. They then go on to suggest how this view of form as evolving trajectories can benefit future product design strategies.


Author(s):  
Alvaro M. Sampaio ◽  
António J. Pontes ◽  
Ricardo Simoes

Full traceability of products is extremely difficult, although it has been sought after for as long as production, distribution and sales chains exist. Electronic traceability methods, such as RFID technology, have been proposed as a possible solution to this problem. In the specific case of RFID, the number of applications that promote innovative solutions in retail and other areas has been continuous growing. However, RFID tags are mostly placed externally on a surface of products or their packages. This is appropriate for logistics, but not for other applications, such as those involving user interaction. In those, not only is the placement of the RFID tag more complex, but it is also necessary that the tag is not visible or not directly accessible, to prevent accidental damage and intentional abuse. This certainly imposes challenges to manufacturing, but mainly creates new challenges to the development of new products and re-design of existing ones. This chapter presents some insights and what we consider to be the two main approaches to incorporating RFID technology into consumer products.


Author(s):  
Lora A. Oehlberg ◽  
Alice M. Agogino ◽  
Sara L. Beckman

Engineers today have access to a myriad of tools for developing sustainable products that have minimal environmental impact. Although consumer interest in sustainability is increasing, it is still not foremost on the minds of many consumers. Engineers are thus faced with the dilemma of developing sustainable solutions for consumers who may not yet want or be able to articulate sustainability needs. We explore this issue by examining user research conducted by students in a graduate-level product design course. We present findings on how users define and describe sustainability, how sustainability needs interact with other user needs, and what tradeoffs people make and feelings people have when faced with sustainability trade-offs. We present a case study of one design team’s findings about sustainability, and how those findings affected the formulation of the team’s mission statement and product strategy. Based on these results, we propose recommendations for how to facilitate the design of innovative and sustainable consumer products.


Author(s):  
Timothy J. Hoffman ◽  
Steven B. Shooter ◽  
Simon Szykman ◽  
Steven J. Fenves

Abstract A study of product development practices at a major consumer product manufacturer, referred to as Company X, was undertaken to compare its methods to an earlier effort in modeling the flow of information in product design, referred to as the Design Information Flow Model. The model considers the recognized need in industry for the seamless capture, storage, and retrieval of design information. The research at Company X focused on the front end of product design, that is, the conceptual phase. It was learned that design, as defined by the Information Flow Model, is well represented at the front end of the company’s design process. However, this validation effort succeeded in uncovering certain voids, particularly in later states of the model. It was also learned that product documentation quality and quantity at Company X vary from project to project, indicating an important aspect to consider in our efforts to enhance computer-aided product design is the user.


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.


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