Establishing a Protocol to Observe Leadership Behaviors Within Engineering Design Teams

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Chickarello ◽  
James Righter ◽  
Apurva Patel ◽  
Joshua D. Summers
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Interrater Reliability ◽  
Design Space ◽  
Leadership Behaviors ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Rater Agreement ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Student Team

The purpose of this study is to establish a protocol capable of identifying functional leadership behaviors in engineering design teams. The protocol is developed from a literature review that includes general leadership theory and research performed on collaborative design teams. Three different raters applied the leadership protocol to a video recording of a graduate student team performing a function structure modeling activity. The results of the study demonstrate that the protocol has a high amount of intra-rater agreement and an acceptable level of interrater reliability. Additionally, the pilot study revealed that clarification and refinement of the protocol with respect to leader/follower behaviors can improve rater agreement. Finally, changes to the protocol are proposed to map leadership behaviors to the design space the team is working in and the design activities that the team is performing.

AN EXPERIMENTAL MULTI-AGENT ENVIRONMENT FOR ENGINEERING DESIGN

1996 ◽  
Vol 05 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 131-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
WEIMING SHEN ◽  
JEAN-PAUL A. BARTHES
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Efficient Design ◽  
Design Environment ◽  
Open Design ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Individual

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.

On the Aggregation of Preferences in Engineering Design

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Allen
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Space ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Aggregation Of Preferences ◽  
Ordinal Preferences ◽  
Additive Separability ◽  
Alternative Designs

Abstract This paper considers the possibility for aggregation of preferences in engineering design. Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem applies to the aggregation of individuals’ (ordinal) preferences defined over a finite number of alternative designs. However, when the design space is infinite and when all individuals have monotone preferences or have von Neumann-Morgenstern (cardinal) utilities defined over lotteries, possibility results are available. Alternative axiomatic frameworks lead to additional aggregation procedures for cardinal utilities. For these results about collaborative design, aggregation occurs with respect to decision makers and not attributes, although some of the possibility results preserve additive separability in attributes.

A Perspective for Evaluating Wikis as a Medium for Communication Within Engineering Design Teams

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolynn J. Walthall ◽  
Srikanth Devanathan ◽  
Lorraine Kisselburgh ◽  
Karthik Ramani ◽  
E. Daniel Hirleman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Design Collaboration

Wikis, freely editable collections of web pages, are showing potential for a flexible documentation and communication tool for collaborative design tasks. They also provide a medium that can be further transformed by properly understanding both the need for flexibility as well as support for design thinking early in the design process. The purpose of this work is to analyze the different dimensions of the wiki from a communication perspective as applicable to design. With a focus on communication in design, we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of using wikis in student engineering design teams. Our ultimate goal is to better support the design process while exploiting the potential for increasing the shared understanding among teams using a wiki. By introducing a wiki in a globally distributed product development course, students gain hands-on experience in using wikis as a design tool. Feedback from students will be collected through questionnaires and used to improve and transform the wiki as a support tool for communication during early design collaboration.

Application of a Protocol to Observe Leadership Behaviors in Engineering Design Teams

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Righter ◽  
Chase Wentzky ◽  
Joshua D. Summers
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Leadership Behaviors ◽  
Informal Leadership ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Function Model ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Protocol Study ◽  
Relational Behaviors ◽  
Functional Leadership

Abstract This protocol study was conducted to increase understanding of the emergence and distribution of functional leadership behaviors in undergraduate engineering design teams. This study applies the protocol presented at the 2018 IDETC to observe design teams consisting of novice engineers constructing a function model during a video recorded session. The videos were then coded for leadership functions and analyzed to determine the distribution of informal leadership functions between the team members and the temporal emergence of the informal leadership structures within the teams. Leadership behaviors were observed to be predominantly transition and action functions with relational behaviors occurring less frequently. The behaviors were quantified by number of occurrences per quintile. The leaders observed to perform the most leadership behaviors early in the sessions often remained consistent. However, leadership functions were shared between team members as demonstrated by the leadership network graphs.

Process-Centric Distributed Collaborative Design Based on the Web

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyun Kim ◽  
Jae Yeol Lee ◽  
Sung-Bae Han
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Heterogeneous Computing ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Cross Platform ◽  
User Access ◽  
Integrate Design ◽  
The Web

Abstract In this paper, we discuss a distributed collaborative design for embodying concurrent engineering. The concept of a process-centric collaborative design is proposed to progress collaboratively an engineering design. It is implemented in the PEDWorks (Process-centric Engineering Design Workspace) as a prototype system for the Web-based collaborative workspace to integrate design activities in a distributed and heterogeneous computing environment. The PEDWorks has a client/server architecture, which consists of server applications such as a process controller, a design board, a communication server and a CAD server, and the client browsers with a Web-based process-driven user interface. We have conformed to CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) standard to support interoperability between distributed objects and have used JAVA to support cross-platform and distributed user access to PEDWorks on the Web. PEDWorks enables design teams to define the design process collaboratively, execute it in a distributed environment, share design information and communicate with each other.

scholarly journals EVALUATING STUDENT DESIGN ACTIVITY IN ENGINEERING DESIGN PROJECTS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. S. Petkau ◽  
D. D. Mann
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Design Problems ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
University Of Manitoba ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
The University

Student design projects in engineering courses are usually short term conceptual design problems. Upon completion of the projects it is difficult to assess which design activities had the greatest contribution to the success of the design. In the fall of 2006, students in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year Design Trilogy courses at the University of Manitoba were asked to keep extensive design journals. Design teams consisted of multiyear students completing various industry projects. Student design activities recorded in the journals were coded. Data were compared between design teams and between students in the different years of study. This paper describes the evaluation process and reports on the preliminary findings.

Understanding the Context of Multidisciplinary Design: Establishing Ecological Validity in the Study of Design Problem Solving

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (16) ◽  
pp. 1082-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. McNeese ◽  
Brian S. Zaff ◽  
Clifford E. Brown ◽  
Maryalice Citera ◽  
Jonathan Selvaraj
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Concept Mapping ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities

The need to understand the design process in all its complexity is motivated by an interest in the development of tools and technologies that would be capable of aiding collaborative design teams. This development effort depends upon an understanding of design activities as they occur within a real world context. Observations of design activities that are made without direct communication with the design team members may fail to capture many of the subtler aspects of the process - aspects that are best understood when described by the design team members themselves. In order to supplement observational studies, this paper presents a case study in which a dialog with members of a variety of collaborative design teams was established in order to elicit information about the nature of collaborative design. A knowledge acquisition technique, concept mapping, was used to achieve an understanding of the role of human factors specialists within the collaborative design process specific to the Air Force's system acquisition program. Results highlight various findings about the nature of design problem solving such as the way different organizational settings influence human factors input in the design process/product. The paper discusses the usefulness of concept mapping to capture in-depth design knowledge and how this type of knowledge complements other approaches to understanding design.

scholarly journals A novel systematic method to evaluate computer-supported collaborative design technologies

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-81
Author(s):  
R. Brisco ◽  
R. I. Whitfield ◽  
H. Grierson
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Text Processing ◽  
Technology Selection ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Selection of suitable computer-supported collaborative design (CSCD) technologies is crucial to facilitate successful projects. This paper presents the first systematic method for engineering design teams to evaluate and select the most suitable CSCD technologies comparing technology functionality and project requirements established in peer-reviewed literature. The paper first presents 220 factors that influence successful CSCD. These factors were then systematically mapped and categorised to create CSCD requirement statements. The novel evaluation and selection method incorporates these requirement statements within a matrix and develops a discourse analysis text processing algorithm with data from collaborative projects to automate the population of how technologies impact the success of CSCD in engineering design teams. This method was validated using data collected across 3 years of a student global design project. The impact of this method is the potential to change the way engineering design teams consider the technology they use and how the selection of appropriate tools impacts the success of their CSCD projects. The development of the CSCD evaluation matrix is the first of its kind enabling a systematic and justifiable comparison and technology selection, with the aim of best supporting the engineering designers collaborative design activity.

scholarly journals COMPARING DESIGN OUTCOMES ACHIEVED BY TEAMS OF EXPERT AND NOVICE DESIGNERS THROUGH AGENT-BASED SIMULATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 661-670
Author(s):  
Harshika Singh ◽  
Gaetano Cascini ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Design Space ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Agent Based Simulation ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Expert And Novice ◽  
Novice Designers

AbstractPrevious research has shown that experienced and novice individuals behave and think differently. Although experienced individuals are better at solving problems, organisations are constantly forming teams of experienced and novice designers to work together on their projects. It is crucial to understand how these teams affect the design outcomes. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate how collaborative design teams perform when composed of varying numbers of experienced and novice agents. Specifically in this paper, teams work on a routine task and design outcomes are measured in terms of quality, variety, and exploration of the design space. Since the parameters in the empirical laboratory experiments are difficult to control, an agent-based model was used to simulate these teams. In general, the results show that a team of novice agents with a small number of experienced agents produces solutions of higher quality than an all novice team of agents. However, an all novice team of agents does provide a higher variety of solutions. These results have important implications when teams of experienced and novice designers are formed to work together in practice.

scholarly journals Evaluating Wikis as a Communicative Medium for Collaboration Within Colocated and Distributed Engineering Design Teams

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolynn J. Walthall ◽  
Srikanth Devanathan ◽  
Lorraine G. Kisselburgh ◽  
Karthik Ramani ◽  
E. Daniel Hirleman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Distributed Teams ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
And Performance

Wikis, freely editable collections of web pages, exhibit potential for a flexible documentation and communication tool for collaborative design tasks as well as support for team design thinking early in the design process. The purpose of this work is to analyze dimensions of wiki technologies from a communication perspective as applicable to design. A wiki was introduced in a globally distributed product development course, and the experiences and performance of colocated and distributed teams in the course were assessed through observations, surveys, and site usage analytics. With a focus on communication in design, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of using wikis in student engineering design teams. Our goal is to use wiki technologies to enhance support for design processes while exploiting the potential for increasing shared understanding among teams. Distributed teams used the wiki more as a design tool and were more supportive of its use in the course whereas colocated teams used it for documentation. The usage patterns, the number and type of files uploaded, and the wiki structure provided indicators of better performing teams. The findings also suggest ways to improve and inform students about best practices using the wiki for design and to transform the wiki as a support tool for communication during early design collaboration.

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