Maria C. Yang

Haptic Force-Feedback Devices for the Office Computer: Performance and Musculoskeletal Loading Issues

Pointing devices, essential input tools for the graphical user interface (GUI) of desktop computers, require precise motor control and dexterity to use. Haptic force-feedback devices provide the human operator with tactile cues, adding the sense of touch to existing visual and auditory interfaces. However, the performance enhancements, comfort, and possible musculoskeletal loading of using a force-feedback device in an office environment are unknown. Hypothesizing that the time to perform a task and the self-reported pain and discomfort of the task improve with the addition of force feedback, 26 people ranging in age from 22 to 44 years performed a point-and-click task 540 times with and without an attractive force field surrounding the desired target. The point-and-click movements were approximately 25% faster with the addition of force feedback (paired t-tests, p < 0.001). Perceived user discomfort and pain, as measured through a questionnaire, were also smaller with the addition of force feedback (p < 0.001). However, this difference decreased as additional distracting force fields were added to the task environment, simulating a more realistic work situation. These results suggest that for a given task, use of a force-feedback device improves performance, and potentially reduces musculoskeletal loading during mouse use. Actual or potential applications of this research include human-computer interface design, specifically that of the pointing device extensively used for the graphical user interface.

An Analysis of Sketching Skill and Its Role in Early Stage Engineering Design

Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of sketching in design cognition, particularly in the early stages of engineering design. The goal of this preliminary study is to consider the role of a designers sketching ability and to examine the potential link between sketching skill and measures of engineering design performance. Sketching ability was evaluated on three distinct aspects relevant to engineering design: visual recall, rendering, and novel visualization. These evaluations were correlated with each other and with measures for sketch fluency, reviewer ranking, and design project outcome. The results of this study suggest that sketching skill is not comprehensive nor is it solely task based. Rather, a designers sketching ability lies between these two poles. Positive correlations were found between the quantity of sketches produced and two of the sketching skills that emphasize drawing facility, but a negative correlation was found between sketch quantity and a skill related to mechanism visualization. No conclusive correlations were found between the sketching skills and design outcome and reviewer ranking. This studys findings suggest an important interplay between a designers ability to sketch and their ability to visualize in their heads or through prototypes. Results also suggest that designers who are given sketch instruction tended to draw more overall.

A methodology for engineering ontology acquisition and validation

Abstract When engineering content is created and applied during the product life cycle, it is often stored and forgotten. Current information retrieval approaches based on statistical methods and keyword matching are not effective in understanding the context of engineering content. They are not designed to be directly applicable to the engineering domain. Therefore, engineers have very limited means to harness and reuse past designs. The overall objective of our research is to develop an engineering ontology (EO)-based computational framework to structure unstructured engineering documents and achieve more effective information retrieval. This paper focuses on the method and process to acquire and validate the EO. The main contributions include a new, systematic, and more structured ontology development method assisted by a semiautomatic acquisition tool. This tool is integrated with Protégé ontology editing environment; an engineering lexicon (EL) that represents the associated lexical knowledge of the EO to bridge the gap between the concept space of the ontology and the word space of engineering documents and queries; the first large-scale EO and EL acquired from established knowledge resources for engineering information retrieval; and a comprehensive validation strategy and its implementations to justify the quality of the acquired EO. A search system based on the EO and EL has been developed and tested. The retrieval performance test further justifies the effectiveness of the EO and EL as well as the ontology development method.

Design information retrieval: a thesauri-based approach for reuse of informal design information

Information is integral to the engineering design process, and gaining access to design knowledge is critical to effective design decision-making. This paper considers the indexing and retrieval of informal, unstructured information captured from electronic design logbooks. One of the key observations of informal design information is its evolutionary nature over time. While this characteristic makes informal information a rich source for reuse, it also makes it difficult to employ traditional information retrieval (IR) approaches. The work described in this paper is based on a framework developed specifically for the information handling requirements of designers. This manual method for indexing information is adapted to meet the evolutionary nature of design through the development of thesauri for design context. Several approaches to building thesauri are examined, including manual and automated methods. It is found that manual methods provide a high level of IR performance, but also have high overhead requirements. Machine methods, however, may provide a viable, low overhead alternative.

CONCEPT GENERATION AND SKETCHING: CORRELATIONS WITH DESIGN OUTCOME

Design outcome is influenced by many hard-to-measure factors in the design process. This paper examines four of these factors to understand their possible correlation with design success. First, is the quantity of design concepts linked to design outcome? Second, is the timing of concept generation associated with design outcome? In both of these cases, the sketches created by designers were taken as evidence of concept generation. Third, is the type of sketch linked to design outcome? And finally, what is the role of a novice designer’s prior experience in design outcome? Statistically significant correlations were found between dimensioned drawings generated at the early stages of design and design outcome, and also between a novice designer’s prior fabrication and building experience and design outcome. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to develop paradigms for appropriate graphics- and text-based information tools for design.

Function Based Design-by-Analogy: A Functional Vector Approach to Analogical Search

Design-by-analogy is a powerful approach to augment traditional concept generation methods by expanding the set of generated ideas using similarity relationships from solutions to analogous problems. While the concept of design-by-analogy has been known for some time, few actual methods and tools exist to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies from general data sources, databases, or repositories, such as patent databases. A new method for extracting functional analogies from data sources has been developed to provide this capability, here based on a functional basis rather than form or conflict descriptions. Building on past research, we utilize a functional vector space model (VSM) to quantify analogous similarity of an idea’s functionality. We quantitatively evaluate the functional similarity between represented design problems and, in this case, patent descriptions of products. We also develop document parsing algorithms to reduce text descriptions of the data sources down to the key functions, for use in the functional similarity analysis and functional vector space modeling. To do this, we apply Zipf’s law on word count order reduction to reduce the words within the documents down to the applicable functionally critical terms, thus providing a mapping process for function based search. The reduction of a document into functional analogous words enables the matching to novel ideas that are functionally similar, which can be customized various ways. This approach thereby provides relevant sources of design-byanalogy inspiration. As a verification of the approach, two original design problem case studies illustrate the distance range of analogical solutions that can be extracted. This range extends from very near-field, literal solutions to far-field cross-domain analogies. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4028093]

The Role of Sketch Finish and Style in User Responses to Early Stage Design Concepts

Conceptual sketches of design alternatives are often employed as a tool for eliciting feedback from design stakeholders, including potential end-users. However, such sketches can vary widely in their level of finish and style, thus potentially affecting how users respond to a concept. This paper presents a study of user responses to three objects drawn in styles ranging from rough hand sketches to CAD drawings. This study also considers the amount of design time required to create the sketches. Results show that respondents generally ranked realistic, “clean” hand sketches the highest over other types of sketches, particularly “rough” sketches. These types of sketches took longer than other types of hand sketches to create, but were still much faster than CAD renderings. Results also suggest that the complexity and familiarity of an object can influence how users respond to a sketch.Copyright

Bio-Inspired Design: An Overview Investigating Open Questions From the Broader Field of Design-by-Analogy

Bio-inspired design and the broader field of design-by-analogy have been the basis of numerous innovative designs throughout history; yet there remains much to be understood about these practices of design, their underlying cognitive mechanisms, and preferred ways in which to teach and support them. In this paper, we work to unify the broader design-by-analogy research literature with that of the bio-inspired design field, reviewing the current knowledge of designer cognition, the seminal supporting tools and methods for bio-inspired design, and postulating the future of bio-inspired design research from the larger design-by-analogy perspective. We examine seminal methods for supporting bio-inspired design, highlighting the areas well aligned with current findings in design-by-analogy cognition work and noting important areas for future research identified by the investigators responsible for these seminal tools and methods. Supplemental to the visions of these experts in bio-inspired design, we suggest additional projections for the future of the field, posing intriguing research questions to further unify the field of bio-inspired design with its broader resident field of design-by-analogy. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4028289]

A study of the role of user-centered design methods in design team projects

Abstract User-centered approaches to design can guide teams toward an understanding of users and aid teams in better posing design problems. This paper investigates the role of user-centered design approaches in design process and outcome within the context of design team projects. The value of interaction with users is examined at several stages throughout the design process. The influence of user-centered design on the performance of design teams is also explored. Results suggest that the quantity of interactions with users and time spent interacting with users alone is not linked with better design outcome, but that iterative evaluation of concepts by users may be of particular value to design prototypes. Suggestions are made based on the reflections from the authors after conducting this study.

A Study of Student Design Team Behaviors in Complex System Design

Large-scale engineering systems require design teams to balance complex sets of considerations using a wide range of design and decision-making skills. Formal, computational approaches for optimizing complex systems offer strategies for arriving at optimal solutions in situations where system integration and design optimization are well-formulated. However, observation of design practice suggests engineers may be poorly prepared for this type of design. Four graduate student teams completed a distributed, complex system design task. Analysis of the teams’ design histories suggests three categories of suboptimal approaches: global rather than local searches, optimizing individual design parameters separately, and sequential rather than concurrent optimization strategies. Teams focused strongly on individual subsystems rather than system-level optimization, and did not use the provided system gradient indicator to understand how changes in individual subsystems impacted the overall system. This suggests the need for curriculum to teach engineering students how to appropriately integrate systems as a whole. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4007840]