Browsing by Subject "Concept generation"
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Item Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps : a directed design-by-analogy technique(2021-12-09) Marshall, Kervin Scott, II; Crawford, Richard H.; Borrego, Maura; Markman, Art; Seepersad, CarolynEngineering design researchers have sought to harness the power of analogy in the design process through the development of directed design-by-analogy techniques. The majority of these techniques focus on identifying potential analogies as opposed to the application of the analogies to a design problem. The Analogy Seeded Mind-Map tool was created to provide designers a way to utilize the identified analogies to solve their design problem. The utility of the method was demonstrated across design activities utilizing both prescribed design problems and more traditional, open-ended design problems. Designers utilizing the method were able to come up with numerous potential solutions to their design problem through the analogical relationship between key functional verbs and related verbal analogies. A series of experiments was performed to determine if it was possible to identify relational or independent properties of the verbal analogies that have a statistically significant effect on evaluation metrics of the concepts generated. The first experiment evaluated the effect of analogical distance as measured by the path length between two verbs in the structure of an online verbal synonym database. The study showed an inconclusive effect of this measure of analogical distance on the evaluation metrics. The second experiment evaluated the effect of word familiarity and the number of definitions of a word on the quantity of concepts generated. Familiarity was assessed utilizing a survey administered prior to the concept generation exercise and the number of definitions was determined by referencing a standard dictionary. The study showed an inconclusive effect of familiarity and number of definitions on the evaluation metrics. The third experiment evaluated the alternative representation of analogies as pictures on the evaluation metrics. Pictorial representation of analogies resulted in a statistically significant increase in the novelty of concepts generated. The fourth and final experiment compared the performance of verbally related and unrelated words on the quantity, quality, and novelty of concepts generated. There was not a statistically significant difference observed for the quantity, quality, or novelty of the concepts generated using related and unrelated verbs. However, related verbs demonstrated an increased efficiency (quality ideas vs total ideas) compared to unrelated words.Item Developing green design guidelines: a formal method and case study(2009-12) Telenko, Cassandra; Webber, Michael E., 1971-; Seepersad, CarolynThis thesis describes and demonstrates a method for consolidating, developing, and using green design guidelines for the innovation of greener products. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is one well-accepted tool for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product so designers can identify areas for redesign effort. However, LCA is a retrospective design tool that requires detailed design information that isn’t known until designs are near completion. Alternatively, green design guidelines provide proven techniques for designing greener products. They can be used during the early stages of design, when many decisions fundamental to innovation and environmental impact are made and before LCA is viable. This thesis extends the work already done in green design guidelines, by updating the current knowledge base and introducing a method for extending the set of existing guidelines to encompass new and emerging areas of sustainability. While guidelines have been created from prior experience in design for environment and life cycle analysis, they have not been maintained as a shared and coordinated repertoire of green design solutions. Instead, sets of guidelines are scattered throughout the literature, contain overlaps, operate at different levels of abstraction, and have varying levels of completeness. For example, some areas of green design guidelines, such as design for disassembly, are well established, while other areas of green design guidelines, such as minimizing energy consumption during use, are still being explored. Additionally, while numerous examples of green design guidelines exist, many of the guidelines have no documented validation of their life cycle impacts. The work for this thesis began with the compilation of a dynamic knowledge base of green design guidelines. This set of guidelines is a consolidation and updating of the green design guidelines already available in literature and can be used as a starting poinrt for future improvements and extensions as the field develops. A standard method was then proposed and tested for creating guidelines in currently undeveloped areas of green design, particularly energy consumption during the operation of a product. The method employs reverse engineering techniques and life cycle analysis to identify green requirements and develop corresponding, new green design guidelines. A case study of electric kettles demonstrated the usefulness of the method by yielding four new guidelines and four, corresponding, energy saving re-designs. For this example, the redesigns showed that guidelines can reduce energy consumption, but may incur tradeoffs with other life cycle stages. Calculation of tradeoffs revealed a range of net life cycle impact values that were caused by increased manufacturing demands and variability in consumer use habits. In addition to redesign in the kettle study, the four new guidelines were tested for usefulness in new product design by use of focus groups. Two groups were tasked with designing a new energy efficient toaster concept. Only one group was given the four green design guidelines that were uncovered using the proposed method. The design group using the new green design guidelines produced more viable and practical green features than the design group that did not have the guidelines as a design tool. These preliminary results suggest that the proposed method is useful for creating new guidelines that are beneficial to design teams tackling novel design problems that differ from the original case study. Further work is needed to establish the statistical significance of these results.Item Does A deeper level of empathy help high school engineering students generate more innovative consumer products?(2011-08) Garcia, Bobby Jo; Seepersad, Carolyn; Allen, David T.Secondary level engineering education is a relatively new field of study. This report evaluates an activity in which high school students experience simulated disabilities as they interact with and redesign consumer products. These activities are also known as empathic experiences, in which the designer is challenged to place himself or herself in the position of a lead user who pushes a product to its extremes and experiences various customer needs sooner and more acutely than the typical user. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not these types of empathic experiences help high school students develop more innovative product ideas in a concept generation activity. The results of this study are compared with similar studies that use college students for the subject pool. Differences between subject pools are examined to identify implications for secondary engineering education and assessment.Item The effects of empathic experience design techniques on product design innovation(2010-05) Saunders, Matthew Nelson; Seepersad, Carolyn; Wood, Kristin L.The effects of empathic experience design (EED) on the product design process are investigated through a series of product redesign experimental studies. As defined, empathic experience design is the simulation of the experiences of a lead user, or someone who uses a product in an extreme condition. To better understand product innovation, the link between creativity in engineering design and commercial market success is explored through literature and a study of award-winning products is performed to analyze the current trends in innovation. The findings suggest that products are becoming increasingly more innovative in the ways in which they interact with users and their surroundings and that a gap exists between the current tools available for engineers to innovate and the types of innovations present in award-winning products. The application of EED to a concept generation study shows that empathic experiences while interacting with a prototype results in more innovative concepts over typical interactions. The experimental group also saw an increase in user interaction innovations and a decrease in technical feasibility. The application of EED to a customer needs study compares the effect of empathic experiences in an articulated use interview setting. The EED interviews discovered 2.5 times the number of latent customer needs than the control group. A slight decrease in the breadth of topics covered was also seen, but was compensated for when used in conjunction with categorical questioning. Overall the use of empathic experience design is shown to increase the level of innovation throughout the product design process.Item Investigating the innovation capabilities of undergraduate engineering students(2013-08) Williams, Paul T., active 2013; Seepersad, CarolynThis thesis describes a method for measuring the innovation capabilities of mechanical engineering students and presents the results of a yearlong experiment. A review of relevant literature shows that it is unclear whether the innovation capabilities of engineering students increase or decrease over time. Experiments were conducted at two universities in which students were asked to redesign an everyday electromechanical product in a sketch-based concept generation activity. Student participants were also asked to complete a self-efficacy survey. Nearly one thousand concepts were generated from a combination of freshmen and seniors. The concepts were evaluated for originality, technical feasibility, and innovation characteristics by multiple raters. At both schools, the findings suggest that the senior-level engineering students are more creative than their freshman-level counterparts without sacrificing technical feasibility. Additionally, the seniors rated higher for originality at the end of the semester than they scored prior to taking their senior design class. These results suggest that the mechanical engineering curricula, and especially the senior-level Engineering Design courses, are having a positive effect on student creativity.Item Low-resolution prototyping : ideation tool and implementation of structured methodology(2015-05) Orr, Michael Curno; Crawford, Richard H.; Jensen, DanLow-resolution prototyping is acknowledged as a critical step in the engineering design process, but when and how physical representations of early conceptual models should be produced is often convoluted. In this research, two studies were conducted using low-resolution prototypes and materials. In the first study, student teams were tasked with generating potential solutions to a broad-scoped engineering design task. The use of physical artifacts was studied as it relates to both ideation as well as team communication. Building upon this, teams were then assigned to construct a concept they developed, and quantitative measures were taken to assess system performance. Teams with access to physical artifacts during ideation produced a higher number of concepts as well as better performing systems. In the second study, a systematic tool was created to guide engineering teams through the low-resolution prototype design and evaluation processes. This tool is designed to have a broad application, and to assist teams in outlining a specific approach to constructing and evaluating early-stage physical models. The tool itself was evaluated to determine its effect, if any, on designers' decisions to iterate and improve concepts, as well as their decisions to conduct further concept generation based on the results of prototyping. The design and evaluation guides were then provided to undergraduate design teams and any effects due to student exposure to the guides were analyzed. Teams used them throughout their design process. Results were gathered regarding the teams' subjective views on the guides as well as their overall low-resolution prototyping process. Low-resolution physical prototyping is becoming more accessible to engineering teams of all types, and decisions on when and how resources should be allocated to this process still remain somewhat unstructured. Implementation during the ideation phase, as well as development of a systematic method for embodiment following concept generation, are two stages of design in which low-resolution prototyping appear to be effective towards achieving a successful design outcome.Item Patent-based analogy search tool for innovative concept generation(2011-12) Murphy, Jeremy Thomas; Wood, Kristin L.; Beaman, Joseph; Campbell, Matthew; Crawford, Richard; Jensen, DanDesign-by-Analogy is a powerful tool to augment the traditional methods of concept generation and offers avenues to develop innovative and novel design solutions. Few tools exist to assist designers in systematically seeking and identifying analogies from within design repositories such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent database. A new tool for extracting functional analogies from patents has been developed to perform this task utilizing a Vector Space Model algorithm to quantitatively evaluate the functional similarity between design problems and patent descriptions of products. Initially, a Boolean Search approach was evaluated and several limitations were identified such as a lack of quantitative metrics for determining search result relevancy ranking as well as inadequate query mapping methods. Next, a Vector Space Model search tool was developed which includes extensive expansion of the Functional Basis using human-based term classification and automated document indexing techniques. The resulting functional patent controlled vocabulary consists of approximately 2,100 unique functions extracted from 65,000 randomly selected patents. The patent search database was generated by indexing 275,000 patents selected from the over 4 million patents available in digital form. A graphical user interface was developed to facilitate query vector generation, and the accompanying search result viewing interface provides data clustering and relevancy ranking. Two case studies are conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the search engine. The first case study successfully replicated the functional similarity results of a classic Design-by-Analogy problem of the guitar pickup winder. The second case study is an original design problem consisting of an automated window washer, and the results illustrate the range of analogically distant solutions that can be extracted ranging from very near-field, literal solutions to the far-field cross domain solutions. Finally, the search tool’s efficacy with regard to increasing quantity and novelty of ideas produced during Concept Generation is experimentally evaluated. The two factors evaluated are first whether analogies improved performance and second how the functionality level of the analogy impacted performance. The experimental results showed an increase in novelty for high functionality analogies compared with the control and other experimental groups. No statistically significant difference was found with regard to quantity of ideas generated.