Guy Prudhomme

An empirical study of engineering knowledge dynamics in a design situation

After presenting our empirical research framework (the COSMOCE Project, which focused on collaborative and synchronous design activities), we explain why knowledge dynamics is a matter of interest for understanding and modelling the product design process and rationale. The assumption is made that an argumentative situation ? typical of product design ? is a good means to study knowledge dynamics with regard to the design problem (requirements definition) and the solution. A theoretical framework incorporating our point of view on the concepts of knowledge, collaborative design and argumentation is presented, to justify the design experiment situation we constructed. The empirical study that was carried out is then presented with a description of the situation through the proposed task, the participants, the tools they used, the steps they took, the instructions given to them, the resources put at their disposal and the deliverables expected from them. The collected data are described and some examples are given. Finally, we describe our analysis method and present some results related to knowledge dynamics.

Requirement-oriented activities in an engineering design process

This paper focuses on new studies to be carried out on requirement management throughout an engineering design process. Requirements management but also requirement engineering has become a complex task because requirements have to be taken into account as soon as possible in the design process and permanently developed and monitored to both guide the design progress and assess its progress. The originality of the paper is in a new classification of design activities oriented towards requirement engineering and management. It highlights the necessity of explicitly elicitating the F-Requirement Relation network (FRRN) to support the activity of designers. Then this point of view is added to the classical points of view on project management and product representation to define a tree-dimension analyser able to define the main properties of the tools and methods on the market and then help require for new methods.

Supporting Problem Expression within a Co-evolutionary Design Framework

From a generic point of view, the engineering design process can be considered as the transformation of needs into a complete product definition. Besides the needs, designers have to take into account some constraints. In this sense, the design process can be seen as a problem solving process, with some specific properties. Several models of the design process exist that consider this problem and its expression differently. We will question the consideration of the design problem in the classical approaches, and identify the relevance of co-evolutionary models to describe the design process, including its cognitive aspects. An activity-based co-evolutionary model of the design process is thus proposed, which defines and situates the objects implicated in evaluation and problem expression. A well-established design corpus is used to evaluate the relevance of the proposed approach to fit a real design process. The objective of the work described in this paper is to use this model as a basis to investigate the support of problem expression, and the activities that refer to it, in a concurrent engineering context.

Pivotal Moments for Decision Making in Collaborative Design : Are They Teachable

In this chapter we argue that designers who collaborate in the workplace in order to evaluate proposed solutions and make decisions about them can learn informally about the characteristics of solutions, but it is more difficult to learn informally about the decision process itself. We illustrate two types of pivotal moments for decision making. The first—a pivotal moment for choice—leads to choosing between two solutions that have already been proposed through mobilizing criteria in arguments. The second—a pivotal moment for emergence—allows for the emergence of a new solution, by arguing against a first solution. This type of argumentation leads to explicit learning concerning the performance of the solution (e.g., can it be constructed, is it ergonomic, etc.) as criteria are elements that characterize performance. Our analysis shows that employing certain criteria provokes a change in focus: designers abandon one solution in favor of evaluating another, either already on the table or completely new. However, because we identify these “pivotal moments” a posteriori and because it is our analysis that allows us to formalize this phenomenon, it is not obvious that designers understand the potential and the importance of such pivotal moments while they are in the midst of the decision process. Our next step is to combine our detailed interaction analysis with a macro-level study about communicating with designers about our results within their organizational context. Our goal is to explore how designers think our results could improve their decision process.

Environment and Design

Taking into account environmental aspects of products during the design phases becomes really necessary for manufacturers. To do that, one organization consists in integrating specialists of the environment (also called “environment actors”) in project teams. In this article, we describe an example of integration, which permits to detail the role of the environment actor. It is shown that he has two different main activities: — to collect information and — to provide this information and tools for collective action. The paper concludes on a proposition addressing the co-operation phases within project teams.

Communicating Consumer Needs in the Design Process of Branded Products

User preferences in design process of branded products are addressed through several layers of mediation occurring at the interfaces between consumers, product designers and engineering designers, whereby product designers act as proxies for consumers. Rather than interacting directly each group makes assumptions about the consumer needs and preferences, which are not explicitly communicated. This paper explains the mediation layers between design team and consumers through a literature based framework of branded product emotions. The mediation in the design team is explained through a case study of communication across disciplinary boundaries. .

Comparison of some approaches to define a CAD model from topological optimization in design for additive manufacturing

Topological optimization is often used in the design of light-weight structures. Additive manufacturing allows to manufacture complex shapes and exploits the full potential of this tool. However, topology optimization results is a discrete representation of the optimal topology, requiring the designers to ‘manually’ create a CAD model. This process can be very time consuming, and hardly penalizes the design process efficiency. In this paper, several possible approaches to get a CAD model from the topological optimization results are proposed. From case studies, benefits and drawbacks of these approaches are discussed in order to help engineers in the choice of their approach.

Testing three techniques to elicit additive manufacturing knowledge

Additive manufacturing (AM) has enabled the building of parts with new shapes and geometrical features. As this technology modifies the practices, new knowledge is required for designing and manufacturing properly. To help experts create and share this knowledge through formalization, our paper focusses on testing three knowledge elicitation techniques. After defining knowledge concepts we present the State of Art in knowledge elicitation and a methodology. A case study about support creation for AM points out: the assets and limits of the techniques; the different types of knowledge elements per technique; some contradictions between experts. We finally propose collective tools for a better elicitation and formalization of AM knowledge.

Toward supporting the implementation of user's emotional perceptions during the design process of branded products

Visual appearance of design plays a critical role in the initial customer perception as well as the emotional response and evaluation of product properties. For branded products, the design of a product must also have distinctive references to the brand values. The successful implementation of the brand value in terms of the physical product properties and product appearance is therefore crucial. This requires product designers and engineering designers working together to create a shared understanding of the brand and the rationale behind the design choices made to implement them. Although communication mechanisms do exist, researchers observed that product designers and engineering designers still do not understand each other well. As the design process progresses the link to original brand values appears to be gradually lost (e.g. through engineering changes and cost reduction activities). Therefore it is important to make sure that the brand identity, and intended emotional responses are maintained throughout the changes. The aim of this paper is to describe the factors contributing to the complexity of communication between product designers and engineering designers related to the development of branded products. Several alternative approaches for supporting this communication are suggested with the objective of making the brand more accessible and understandable to engineers, who are not trained in brand design and aesthetics, and of integrating an engineering viewpoint in early design idea generation and decision making.Copyright

Coupling engineering knowledge with product design knowledge by the means of multiple view product model

Product design involves a multitude of actors who have complementary knowledge and responsibility about the product under development. Coupling together their views-points, particularly these of product designers and engineering designers in the upstream phases of the design, has the objectives to make the collaboration easier and to improve the product from both of their expertises. The Product/Process multi-view model is a collaborative tool which supports engineering designers during product development processes. It allows the structuring and tracing of relative knowledge of engineering designers on the product. We make the assumption that Product/Process multi-view model could also be used to create relationships with the product designers representation. The paper deals with this product model and illustrates the possible connection between engineering knowledge and product design knowledge.