DRed and Design Folders: A Way of Capturing, Storing and Passing On Knowledge Generated During Design Projects

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob H. Bracewell ◽  
Saeema Ahmed ◽  
Ken M. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Software Tool ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Design Rationale ◽  
Knowledge Model ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Design Work ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Design Case Study ◽  
Or Team

This paper describes a software tool called DRed (the Design Rationale editor), that allows engineering designers to record their design rationale (DR) at the time of its generation and deliberation. DRed is one of many proposed derivatives of the venerable IBIS concept, but by contrast with other tools of this type, practicing designers appear surprisingly willing to use it. DRed allows the issues addressed, options considered, and associated arguments for and against, to be captured graphically. The software, despite still being essentially a research prototype, is already in use on high profile design projects in an international aerospace company, including the presentation of results of design work to external customers. The paper compares DRed with other IBIS-derived software tools, to explain how it addresses problems that seem to have made them unsuitable for routine use by designers. In addition to the capture and presentation of the DR itself, the set of linked DR graphs can be used to provide a map of the contents of an electronic Design Folder, containing all the documents created by an individual or team during a design project. The structure of the knowledge model instantiated in such a Design Folder is described. By reprising a design case study published at the DTM 2003 conference, concerning the design of a Mobile Arm Support (MAS), the DRed knowledge model is compared with the previously proposed Design Data Model (DDM), to show how it addresses the shortcomings identified in the DDM. Finally the methodology and results of the preliminary evaluation of the use of DRed by aerospace designers are presented.

A Design Data Model to Support Rationale Capture and Functional Synthesis

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Aurisicchio ◽  
Rob H. Bracewell ◽  
Ken M. Walllace
Keyword(s):  
Data Model ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Design Rationale ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Arm Support ◽  
Functional Synthesis ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
And Function

Keeping design notebooks is widely considered to be a very good practice as it allows the progression of a design to be recorded, and it is one of the few spontaneous ways in which designers document their design processes. Nevertheless, design notebooks by their nature contain diverse collections of information and knowledge, lacking any clear and comprehensive structure. The aim of researching the generation and use of such design knowledge is to provide a better understanding of how it may be captured and structured for later review and reuse, either by the original designers or by others. In this paper, we explore and test ways of structuring design rationale that is recorded in design notebooks during mechanical design projects. Our investigation focuses on the application of two well-known alternative knowledge structures. These are PROSUS matrices that are used for indexing design rationale against the nodes of a product breakdown [1], and Function-Means Trees [2] that are used to represent the generation and combination of alternative partial design solutions. The results are compared with the Design Data Model, which has been proposed as a way of beneficially unifying these two seemingly incompatible approaches. Design notebooks kept during the Mobile Arm Support project, an inhouse design project undertaken between 1992 and 1997 in Cambridge Engineering Design Centre, provided the source material to illustrate our arguments.

scholarly journals Developing a competency taxonomy for teacher design knowledge in technology-enhanced learning environments: a literature review

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mi Song Kim
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Design Knowledge ◽  
Technology Enhanced Learning ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Teacher Design ◽  
Enhanced Learning

AbstractRecent research in technology-enhanced learning environments has indicated the need to redefine the role of teachers as designers. This supports successful learners better able to adapt to twenty-first century education, in particular STEM education. However, such a repositioning of teaching as a design science challenges teachers to reconceptualize educational practice as an act of design, not in the artistic meaning of the word. Our recent research finding also indicated that teacher design knowledge (TDK) processes are often invisible to both the teacher educators and the teachers. To respond to these challenges, this paper will define TDK for STEM teachers by making TDK visible in the form of a TDK competency taxonomy. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the characteristics of teaching practices in technology-enhanced learning environments. This TDK competency taxonomy consists of four main categories drawing on existing literature on teacher design work and teacher instructional design: data practice, design practice, knowledge creation practice, and professional teaching practice. The implications of these findings were discussed.

scholarly journals Providing a Uniform Design Experience in an Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Program

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo A. Salustri ◽  
W. Patrick Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Uniform Design ◽  
Design Engineering ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Engineering Program ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Design Experience

The design experience of 3rd year undergraduates in Mechanical Engineering at Ryerson University, and the assessment of student design work, was found to be disjointed and highly variable across the program. To attempt to address this, the authors are constructing courseware to help instructors of non-design engineering courses embed rich and consistent design projects into their courses. A “lightweight” Fast-Design process was developed. Course-specific design project examples of the process are being developed for five 3rd year courses using this design process. Current versions of all courseware are freely available. This paper details the nature of the courseware and how it was designed, developed,and deployed for the project. To date, one case has been deployed, two developed, and two more are under development. While results are so far only anecdotal, there is reason to believe that our approach can noticeably improve the design experience of students in non-design engineering courses.

Providing a uniform design experience in an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Program

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo A. Salustri ◽  
W. Patrick Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Uniform Design ◽  
Design Engineering ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Engineering Program ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Design Experience

The design experience of 3rd year undergraduates in Mechanical Engineering at Ryerson University, and the assessment of student design work, was found to be disjointed and highly variable across the program. To attempt to address this, the authors are constructing courseware to help instructors of non-design engineering courses embed rich and consistent design projects into their courses. A “lightweight” Fast-Design process was developed. Course - specific design project examples of the process are being developed for five 3rd year courses using this design process. Current versions of all courseware are freely available. This paper details the nature of the courseware and how it was designed, developed, and deployed for the project. To date, one case has been deployed, two developed, and two more are under development. While results are so far only anecdotal, there is reason to believe that our approach can noticeably improve the design experience of students in non-design engineering courses.

Research and Application on Visual Aided Cable Design System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Ying ◽  
Yu Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Power Plant ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
3D Visualization ◽  
Design System ◽  
Plant Design ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Engineering Research ◽  
Cable Laying

Nuclear power plants have many types of equipment, dense structure, large plant area, and very complex cable channels. Considering the division and type of cables, cable design has been one of the most complicated tasks in power plant design. Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI) uses Intergraph PDS system for power plant design, for the AP1000 and CAP series of projects, including equipment and raceway modeling, and use Shaw Cable Manager (SCM) system for cable laying. Cable design work involves multi-system data processing, though without a data integration platform based on 3D visualization. In this paper, a visual aided cable design system is built to display the design data and cable data in a unified 3D plant model, which realizes the visualization and integration of multi-system information, and improves reliability and efficiency of the design work. This method can be applied to a variety of design systems, and has good scalability.

Reusing design information: an investigation of the document creation process in service design projects

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Tzu Lin
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Service Design ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Design Rationale ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
Design Information ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Is Design

PurposeDesign rationale is design information that explains why an entity is designed as it is. This paper investigates how the documentation process and the use of documents in service design projects influence the reuse of design information across projects.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzes two sets of data collected through interviews and field observation. It first applied Lund's (2004) four elements of documentation process to categorize the collected data. Then it used bottom-up data analysis approach to identify patterns of the documentation process.FindingsThe author speculates designers' focus on certain documents' social aspect instead of material aspect influences how they reuse design information across projects. Some documents are important because they represent a consensus, and some are important because of the document producers rather than its content. The author also found a similarity between economists and service designers by comparing the study results with Harper and Sellen's (1995) findings. Based on the comparison, the author concludes that detailed research reports are easily reusable across design projects. Finally, although the author observed that designers are using templates to explicate design rationale, the created content is not used across projects.Originality/valueThis study identifies six types of documents that are commonly created in service design projects, three types of producer involvement and three types of provisional design outcomes. It also provides two suggestions for designers to reuse design information across service design projects better and two implications for future study.

Coordination of Product Design Process in View of Product and Organizational Structures

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuya Oizumi ◽  
Kazuhiro Aoyama
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Product Model ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Product Design Process ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Two Phases

Management of product design projects becomes increasingly difficult as the complexity of products increases. For better management of such projects, well-considered preliminary coordination of design processes is essential. This paper proposes a method for coordination in the design process, which comprises two phases: 1) division of the design work into smaller tasks and sequencing them and 2) establishment of management activities. To facilitate this coordination, an integrated model of a product, process, and organization is proposed. The division and sequencing of design tasks is based upon analysis of the product model. The method utilizes rational prioritization of design parameters, which means identification of parameters that must be first considered for changes. The resulting design processes can show where coordination among design tasks is needed. This, in turn, implies the necessity of management. It is preferable for a different style of management to be adopted for each part. Here, the importance of management and organizational structure prescribe the style of management that should be adopted. In this paper, two approaches to management are discussed: 1) the formation of a pre-agreement, and 2) integration and after-approval. Throughout the paper, the example of a solar boat design is used to explain how the proposed method works and to demonstrate its feasibility.

The Function Analysis Diagram

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Aurisicchio ◽  
Rob Bracewell ◽  
Gareth Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Research Collaboration ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Design Rationale ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Modeling Tools ◽  
Engineering Problems ◽  
Simple Notation ◽  
Complex System Design

Understanding product functions is a key aspect of the work undertaken by engineers involved in complex system design. The support offered to these engineers by existing modeling tools such as the Function Tree and the Function Structure is limited as they are not intuitive and do not scale well to deal with real world engineering problems. A research collaboration between two universities and a major power system company in the aerospace domain has allowed the authors to further develop a method for function analysis known as Function Analysis Diagram (FAD) which was already in use by line engineers. The capability to generate and edit these diagrams was implemented in the Decision Rationale editor (DRed) a software tool for capturing design rationale. This article presents the main beneficial characteristics of the method and justifies them using two engineering case studies. The results of the research have shown that the FAD method has a simple notation, permits the modeling of product functions together with structure, allows the production of rich and accurate descriptions of product functionality and is suitable to represent complex problems.

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