Dorian Marjanović

The design ontology: foundation for the design knowledge exchange and management

The article presents the research of the nature, building and practical role of a Design Ontology as a potential framework for the more efficient product development (PD) data-, information- and knowledge- description, -explanation, -understanding and -reusing. In the methodology for development of the ontology two steps could be identified: empirical research and computer implementation. Empirical research has included domain documentation analysis (Genetic Design Model System developed by Mortensen 1999), identification of the key concepts and relations between them, and categorisation of the concepts and relations into taxonomies. As an epistemological foundation for the concepts formalisation, The Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) proposed by IEEE, was reused. As the result of the previously described process, the ontology content has been categorised into six main subcategories divided between physical and abstract world. As a next step the computer thesaurus has been created. Using the thesauri, the knowledge evolved during the PD has been described, and the set of the created concepts and relations instances has been used for the ontology model consistency checking and refinement. The Design Ontology was evaluated through test product examples and based on this evaluation and proposed implementation framework further research steps are proposed.

Perspectives on design creativity and innovation research

The aim of this extended editorial is to offer a perspective on design creativity and innovation research on the occasion of launching the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation. Thirty six members of the editorial board present their expectations, views, or opinions on the topics of the journal. All of these articles are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, summaries of the 36 articles are consolidated. This editorial also analyzes keywords from each of the articles, and the results are visualized in Section 4. The keyword analysis covers not only those words taken directly from each of the articles but also the implicit keywords that are suggested by the explicit ones. We believe this extended editorial will help the researchers, in particular young researchers, comprehend the essence of design creativity and innovation research and obtain a clue to tackle the new discipline.The aim of this extended editorial is to offer a perspective on design creativity and innovation research on the occasion of launching the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation. Thirty six members of the editorial board present their expectations, views, or opinions on the topics of the journal. All of these articles are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, summaries of the 36 articles are consolidated. This editorial also analyzes keywords from each of the articles, and the results are visualized in Section 4. The keyword analysis covers not only those words taken directly from each of the articles but also the implicit keywords that are suggested by the explicit ones. We believe this extended editorial will help the researchers, in particular young researchers, comprehend the essence of design creativity and innovation research and obtain a clue to tackle the new discipline.

Grammatical Evolution of Technical Processes

The aim of this thesis is to provide a support to the beginning of the conceptual development phase by offering designers the possibility to computationally synthesise technical processes in order to obtain operand transformation variants in the respect to known technological principles. To accomplish the aim the following objectives had to be met: a theoretical objective which considered the development of a method for generation of operand transformation variants; and an empirical objective as the implementation of the method as a computational tool built to a stage that allows verification of the research results. First, it was necessary to understand the phenomenon of problem solving and cognitive aspects of synthesis as a part of the problem solving activity. Then, the state-of-the-art review on the Computational Design Synthesis (CDS) [2] was conducted the purpose of which was the determination of theoretical and methodological background of the current research projects and the comparison and the systematization of those in order to focus this research. The efforts where turned to the exploration of the existent mathematical concepts which could be used for the modelling of technical processes and related synthesis method. Based on the findings from the field of CDS it was concluded to conceive the method as a knowledgebased with the solution emerging as a result of successive application of production rules in which the knowledge about technical processes and working principles is formalised. The theoretical objective concluded with the main scientific contribution of this thesis: (1) the creation of multigraph based formal model of technical process, (2) the definition of graphgrammar based formal model of technical process synthesis, (3) addition of stochastic search to technical process synthesis by applying grammatical evolution [3]. Within the empirical objective a computational tool was realised on the foundations of the developed method. During the research it was found that knowledge about technical processes still does not exists in the accessible open taxonomies or ontologies as per se, which required to propose (4) knowledge formalisation suggestions when defining the graph grammar of technical processes.

Considering an object-oriented approach to design process planning

The paper describes the structure of an environment for a design system based on a design plan, which represents a design process. The approach presented establishes a flexible structure, which improves and integrates the usage of software tools available in the design process. Possible design plan topologies, the plan generation and exploitation issues are discussed. The structure of the prototype model has been realised in a relational database environment. The potentials of an object-oriented approach to design process planning are analysed, as well as the possible strategies for improving the prototype procedure. Proposals for structuring a design plan with objects and classes are presented.

Formal modelling of technical processes and technical process synthesis

The computational design synthesis approach considered in this paper, proposes directed multigraph and graph grammar-based models of technical processes and technical process synthesis. The theory of technical systems, which is adopted as a theoretical foundation for this work, assumes a teleological viewpoint bringing together the purpose of technical systems and fulfilment of customer demands and societal needs. These demands and needs are met by means of a technical process inside which the operands are transformed with the assistance of a technical system to achieve a desired state. Formal models of technical processes and technical process synthesis establish the foundation for further application of search algorithms to support early engineering design. The engineering knowledge about technical processes is provided within a set of graph grammar rules. As the result of the proposed approach, the designer is enabled to consider different operand transformations in an expedient fashion with the possibility of the generation of novel alternatives. The proposed approach is illustrated through an example of the design of a stiffened panel assembly line involving welding and riveting as two basic principles.

Tracing Engineering Evolution with Evolutionary Algorithms

The investigations of the recent complex engineering knowledge, experience, analytical and computational tools may serve to explain the technical progress and facilitate the future development. For this purpose this chapter will present how the evolutionary algorithms can simulate the developing complexity of engineering reasoning that in reverse can back-trace the primitive origins of modern technical products. The chapter will resume the evolutionary algorithms as well as the evolutionary optimization and design processes based on innovative and creative activities with the aim to define their potentialities in discovering the evolution of engineering products.

Consolidation of Methods for Visualization and Management of Engineering Design Data Sets

Existing design support tools and methods struggle to deal with numerous data management situations that arise in medium and large-scale design projects. Authors analyse and compare the suitability and efficiency of several methods for managing and visualization of relationships between engineering objects and propose guidelines for building a framework/interface for consolidated usage of those methods in industrial practice. The proposed matrix- based consolidation methodology builds on findings gathered from two monitored design projects as well as previous research in areas of traceability and visualization. For engineering objects (data sets) that belong to one or two domains which are not hierarchically structured it is argued that a simple matrix interface is sufficient to record the relations. Furthermore, if the engineering objects are hierarchically structured the browser interface is suggested. In the most complex situation, where objects belong to multiple different domains the use of diagrams and digital whiteboards is suggested.

Idea assessment and selection in product innovation – the empirical research results

The process of innovation takes significant resources, and therefore it is of great importance for companies that want to recognize the ideas with high innovation capacity as early as possible, and in a transparent manner, with the least necessary amount of expert knowledge. Current research indicates that companies often carry out the selection of ideas ad hoc or intuitively, and that only a small number of companies have defined the methods for ideas assessment and evaluation. In doing so, such problems as imprecise definition of the variables used in the evaluation process of the capacities of ideas, undefined metrics and interaction variables will arise. In order to determine the practical points of view in this area, a study was conducted in the form of a survey on a representative sample of Croatian companies which have product innovation in their production program. The survey is aimed at determining what motivates companies to innovate, and the ways in which companies carry out the assessment and selection of ideas. Through a thorough study of the literature, a set of variables that are commonly used in the idea capacities assessment for product development have been defined, and the survey tried to establish the practical significance of individual variables for the participants of the process. This paper presents the results of the study.

Design Research and Education: A University Perspective

Design, designing and design research become terms of their own, spread over disciplines, professional, cultural or social groups, geographic borders or borders of any kind. However the body of knowledge about design has evolved significantly and engineering design research is an increasingly mature stand alone discipline The article discuses the main activities of design departments at universities: design research, design practice and design education, supporting the view that none of the three can be viewed, discussed or practiced without the others. Design research, education and practice as performed in academia today are primarily a question of balance. Discussion is supported with selected examples. Indication of potential research areas is presented.

Behaviour Prediction Framework in System Architecture Development

This paper proposes a Behaviour Prediction Framework with an objective to help designers tackling the problem of uncertainty emerging from system architecture and the effects of the uncertain operating conditions. The proposed framework combines structural and dynamic system model. The Design Structure Matrix is applied to model structural arrangements and dependencies between the subsystems. The Model Predictive Control is applied to model the system in discrete and continuous dynamic domains. As the result of the proposed framework, stability analysis of subsystems in interaction become possible and feedback on system architecture could be provided. To test validity of the proposed approach, the test case involving climate chamber with heat regeneration is presented.