Conducting Non-Adaptive Experiments in a Live Setting: A Bayesian Approach to Determining Optimal Sample Size

This research studies the use of predetermined experimental plans in a live setting with a finite implementation horizon. In this context, we seek to determine the optimal experimental budget in different environments using a Bayesian framework. We derive theoretical results on the optimal allocation of resources to treatments with the objective of minimizing cumulative regret, a metric commonly used in online statistical learning. Our base case studies a setting with two treatments assuming Gaussian priors for the treatment means and noise distributions. We extend our study through analytical and semi-analytical techniques which explore worst-case bounds and the generalization to k treatments. We determine theoretical limits for the experimental budget across all possible scenarios. The optimal level of experimentation that is recommended by this study varies extensively and depends on the experimental environment as well as the number of available units. This highlights the importance of such an approach which incorporates these factors to determine the budget.

Manufacturing Vulnerability: How Resource Scarcity Hinders Team Coordination During Manufacturing in Nigerian Factories

The purpose of this research is to learn how less-skilled workers (LSWs) and highly-skilled workers (HSWs) coordinate in Nigerian factories, where the formal education gap between these two groups can be quite significant. The study takes place in two factories and two universities across four Nigerian states over the summer of 2018. Drawing on methods of ethnography (i.e. a collection of qualitative methods to closely observe social interactions and practices as to interpret and build theory), it was discovered that resource scarcity hinders team coordination through the occurrence of four obstacles: (1) unclear role boundaries and work processes, (2) poor attitude towards work, (3) under- and overutilization of employees, and (4) worker demoralization and feelings of being undervalued. This paper builds upon previous work on factory coordination in cross-occupational functional groups in Silicon Valley. Theoretically, this paper reveals how the studied manufacturing firms in Nigeria currently perform team coordination and the challenges that prevent them from reaching high efficiency. Additionally, it offers premises for future field experiments to test the generalizability of the findings and interventions to enhance coordination effectiveness and the product development process in Sub-Saharan African manufacturing firms. Implications for the literature on engineering for global development is discussed. Ultimately, this research is a small step towards enabling independent African firms to have the skills, tools, and resources to design and create their own unique solutions for challenges faced in-country.

Towards Consistent Value Orientation in Release Planning

Product development is experiencing a paradigm shift under the impact of highly segmented and rapidly evolving markets. The intention to offer successful products in such turbulent conditions forces companies to provide value comprehensively but rapidly. These attempts conceal a high risk of rising product complexities and development efforts. For this reason, the aim of design should be to maintain or improve value contribution according to customer and market demands with fast response time while reducing internal product disruption and development efforts. A proactive planning of continuous value contribution by introducing new product features, while considering the complexity of product structures and corresponding development efforts, is established in the field of release planning. Here, systematic ways are proposed to support the identification and timing of product features to provide value for customers and markets as well as the consideration and planning of according efforts for their realization. However, the literature highlights a need for more consistent value orientation in release planning. For this reason, this contribution aims to present an outline and further steps for consistent value orientation in release planning in the context of systems engineering. Accordingly, this contribution first discusses the significance of consistent value orientation during release planning activities. On this basis, requirements for consistent value orientation in release planning are presented and the respective current state of existing concepts are discussed. Ultimately, a framework towards consistent value orientation in release planning is presented with a concluding outlook for further research.

Collaborative Mind-Mapping: A Study of Patterns, Strategies, and Evolution of Maps Created by Peer-Pairs

We present a study on collaborative mind-mapping to understand how peers collaborate in pairs to create mind-maps, how the maps evolve over time, and how collaboration changes between the peer-pair across multiple maps. Mind-mapping is an important tool that is studied and taught in design practice and research respectively. While widely used as a brainstorming technique, the collaborative aspects of mind-mapping are little understood in comparison to other ideation methods such as concept sketching etc. In addition to presenting creativity ratings on the outcome (i.e. the mind-map), we extensively report on the patterns of collaborative exploration, strategies that emerge from the collaborators, inhibition, and the overall process of map creation. We discuss the implications of these observations on the development of computer-support for mind-mapping.

Successes and Challenges in Implementing Lean Product Development

Lean thinking is a successful management philosophy that originated in the production dominated mid-20th century. More recently, these principles have been contextualized in a product development setting. However, few companies have successfully adopted lean product development. The gap between the existing knowledge within the academic community and the current practices within the industry motivated an industry-academia research roundtable to identify the successes and challenges in implementing lean product development. This paper shares the successful practices, and the implementation challenges that industry faces in the context of lean product development, which include nomenclature, visual management and metrics, knowledge repository and lean education & training. The paper concludes with a roadmap of research required to enable the adoption of lean product development in the industry.

Dimensions of Product Similarity in Design by Analogy: An Exploratory Study

This paper explores dimensions of similarity in analogy-based design through a user study. Analogy is used in design to help designers use knowledge that exists between and across domains in order to solve design problems at hand. The five dimensions of similarity that were explored in this paper are: function, form, energy flow, material flow, and motion. Fifty student volunteers, majoring in Mechanical Engineering, were given electro-mechanical products that are to be designed, and were asked to select, from a set of options, other products that they considered could be useful references for their task, if those options were offered by a hypothetical design-by-analogy web-service. In their response, they were also asked to identify the dimensions along which they found their preferred reference products to be similar to the design product. It was observed that participants selected products based on similarity along multiple dimensions of analogy. Function-based similarity was the most dominant trait, followed by energy, motion, material, and form. The results from this study will help to design more elaborate studies that will inform the design of computational support algorithms that will aid designers by recommending analogous solutions to help with solution search and ideation.

Prediction of Design Team Performance on a Conceptual Design Task Using an Automatable, Topic-Independent Analysis of Language Use

In this research, starting with an established metric called the Language Style Matching (LSM) measure [1] we show that some new LSM-based measures can predict team performance on an open-ended design task. We call these Style Entrainment Signal (SES) measures. Using them, two conversational patterns are newly identified, which we call “dwelling” and “forward-moving.” We show that a forward-moving pattern is associated with better-rated results produced by teams in 30-minute long conceptual design meetings with significant brainstorming activity. Through this, we gain insight into some of the interpersonal dynamics that contribute to a design team’s success. These results are founded on previous work in psycholinguistics, where it has been shown that analysis of language use can be used in several ways to predict a team’s performance on short, well-defined tasks. By expanding the research to more open-ended design tasks, and identifying two newly-measurable conversational patterns, we contribute back to psycholinguistic theory. The analysis developed for this work is automatable and topic-independent, and so it has potential to be applied widely.

A Wizard-of-Oz Experiment to Demonstrate Water Reduction and User Training With an “Autonomous” Faucet

Resource-conserving products and commercial smart products abound in the market, but the intersection of the two is largely unexplored from the human-centered-design community. Research has shown that people (users) have different cognitive styles that influence their methods of approaching challenges and how they interpret the world. Utilizing this knowledge of cognitive styles, energy conserving products could (1) reduce resource consumption of its users and (2) increase user satisfaction with interacting with those products. Passive products — such as a flow-limiting showerhead — do not seek to change the user behavior and solely change the behavior of the product to conserve water. In this work, we design and test an “active smart” product to see if it can change users through product interaction. A custom faucet was designed and built to conduct an experiment with the Wizard of Oz (WoZ) technique of remotely operating a device to create the impression of autonomy/smartness. Participants were asked to wash multiple sets of dishes to test if: (1) participants use less water when washing dishes with a smart faucet and (2) participants remember this behavior change and use less water in a alter interaction with a normal faucet. Results confirmed the hypotheses and showed that those interacting with the faucet reduced their consumption by 26.5% during WoZ treatment and, importantly, 10.9% while washing after interacting with the WoZ treatment. Limitations include the implementation of the smart algorithm and the willingness-to-pay for a smart faucet in the home. This study demonstrates that smart products can conserve resources and train for further conservation even when the user is not using the smart product.

The Effects of Locus of Control and Big Five Personality Traits on Collaborative Engineering Design Tasks With Negotiation

Collaborative systems design is a human-centered activity dependent on individual decision-making processes. Personality traits have been found to influence individual behaviors and tendencies to compete or cooperate. This paper investigates the effects of Big Five and Locus of Control personality traits on negotiated outcomes of a simplified collaborative engineering design task. Secondary data includes results from short-form personality inventories and outcomes of pair design tasks. The data includes ten sessions of four participants each, where each participant completes a sequence of 12 pair tasks involving design space exploration and negotiation. Regression analysis shows a statistically-significant relationship between Big Five and Locus of Control and total individual value accumulated across the 12 design tasks. Results show the Big Five, aggregating extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and intellect/imagination to a single factor, negatively affects individual value and internal Locus of Control positively affects individual value. Future work should consider a dedicated experiment to refine understanding of how personality traits influence collaborative systems design and propose interventions to improve collaborative design processes.

How the Design of a 3D Printer Bridged Engineering Design Processes and the Agile Software Manifesto

Individual engineering design projects face different challenges depending on their scale. Instead of dealing with problems of complex multidisciplinary systems, small scale design must overcome issues of limited resources. The philosophy of agile software development has been highly successful in addressing similar issues in the software engineering realm over the past two decades. Through the design and prototyping of a low-budget desktop stereolithography printer, the application of agile principles to engineering design process is explored. The printer’s design is discussed in detail to provide examples of successes and failures when these agile principles are put into practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of how agile principles could be leveraged in engineering design. The approach taken in this paper is more of a longitudinal study of a single design process over a twelve-month period as opposed to rigorous experiments that engage multiple users in short design scenarios. Nonetheless, this case study demonstrates how the application of agile principles can inform, improve, and complement traditional engineering design processes.