Unexpected discoveries and S-invention of design requirements: important vehicles for a design process

Designers, during a conceptual design process, do not just synthesize solutions that satisfy initially given requirements, but also invent design issues or requirements that capture important aspects of the given problem. How do they do this? What becomes the impetus for the invention of important issues or requirements? So-called ‘unexpected discoveries', the acts of attending to visuo-spatial features in sketches which were not intended when they were drawn, are believed to contribute to it. The purpose of the present research is to verify this hypothesis. Analysing the cognitive processes of a practising architect in a design session, we found that in about a half of his entire design process there were bi-directional relations between unexpected discoveries and the invention of issues or requirements. Not only did unexpected discoveries become the driving force for the invention of issues or requirements, but also the occurrence of invention, in turn, tended to cause new unexpected discoveries. This has provided empirical evidence for two anecdotal views of designing. First, designing is a situated act; designers invent design issues or requirements in a way situated in the environment in which they design. We call inventions of this sort situated-invention (S-invention). Secondly, a design process progresses in such a way that the problem-space and the solution-space co-evolve. Further, this has brought a pedagogical implication as well as an insight about an important aspect of learning by experience in design.     

Bimodal recognition of affective states with the features inspired from human visual and auditory perception system

In this article, attention-based mechanism with the enhancement on biologically inspired network for emotion recognition is proposed. Existing bio-inspired models use multiscale and multiorientation architecture to gain discriminative power and to extract meticulous visual features. Prevailing HMAX model represents S2 layers by randomly selected prototype patches from training samples that increase the computational complexity and degrade the discerning ability. As eyes and mouth regions are the most powerful and reliable cues in determining facial emotions, they serve as the prototype patches for S2 layer in HMAX model. Audio code 4 book is constructed from mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, temporal and spectral features processed by principal component analysis. Audio and video data features are fused to train support vector machine classifier. The attained results on eNTERFACE, surrey audio-visual expressed emotion and acted facial expressions in the wild database datasets ascertain the efficiency of the proposed architecture for emotion recognition.     

基于系统工程过程的维修性设计要求生成过程研究

维修性设计要求的生成是维修性工作的一个重要组成部分,然而目前还没有有效的方法和过程支持该项工作的开展.借鉴系统工程过程的基本步骤,结合产品的一般研制程序,提出维修性设计要求的一体化生成过程,该生成过程包括维修方案的生成、维修性指标的确定与分配、维修性设计要求的生成三个主要工作,并对各项工作过程进行了详细的阐述.     

Biologically Inspired Design of Context-Aware Smart Products

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and cyber–physical systems (CPSs) has paved the way for the increasing popularity of smart products. Context-awareness is an important facet of product smartness. Unlike artifacts, various bio-systems are naturally characterized by their extraordinary context-awareness. Biologically inspired design (BID) is one of the most commonly employed design strategies. However, few studies have examined the BID of context-aware smart products to date. This paper presents a structured design framework to support the BID of context-aware smart products. The meaning of context-awareness is defined from the perspective of product design. The framework is developed based on the theoretical foundations of the situated function–behavior–structure ontology. A structured design process is prescribed to leverage various biological inspirations in order to support different conceptual design activities, such as problem formulation, structure reformulation, behavior reformulation, and function reformulation. Some existing design methods and emerging design tools are incorporated into the framework. A case study is presented to showcase how this framework can be followed to redesign a robot vacuum cleaner and make it more context-aware.     

陶瓷膜工程设计:从工艺到微结构

针对目前陶瓷膜工程设计偏重工艺参数设计所存在的问题,分析了陶瓷膜材料微结构特性对膜过程影响的重要性,提出了目前以工艺为主的陶瓷膜工程设计向以膜微结构参数为主设计转变的新思路.在前期工作的基础上,建立了胶体体系过滤的陶瓷膜性能与微结构关系模型,并结合工程应用实例就膜材料微结构设计方法进行探索,在颗粒悬浮液、中药水提液、乳化废水等工程应用中得到了很好地实施,理论计算和工程应用结果表明,微结构优化设计的陶瓷膜具有更好的分离性能.陶瓷膜工程设计方法从工艺到微结构的转变为陶瓷膜应用提供了新的模式.     

A systematic approach to preliminary polymer process development: modeling and design

A general and complete methodology is presented to facilitate systematic modeling and design of polymer processes during the early development period. To capture and handle the subjective type of uncertainty, embedded in the preliminary process development, fuzzy theories are used as a basis to model and design the process in the presence of ambiguity and vagueness. Physical membership functions are developed for mapping the relation between process variables and the associated fuzzy uncertainties. Based on the qualitative results generated using our previously proposed “linguistic based preliminary design method,” the process modeling can be followed even in the absence of any process governing equations. The modeling is carried out by establishing an appropriate fuzzy reasoning system which provides a specific functional mapping that relates input process variables to one (or more than one) output performance parameter(s). A reduced yet feasible domain is generated by our qualitative design scheme to constrain the process variables. Now, any optimization routine can then be employed to search for a proper process design. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology by its application to a typical compression molding process.     

Optimal process capability analysis for process design

Conventional process capability analysis is used to measure and control the quality level of a production process in real exercises for on-line quality management. There has been a deficiency in this type of management; namely, the defects which occur in the production process are only passively detected and modified afterwards. Additionally, conventional process capability expression has difficulty distinguishing between alternatives for process selection among possible candidates before process realisation. There is, therefore, considerable motivation for developing a process capability expression which can be used to evaluate alternatives at the beginning of the process design, i.e., off-line application. The conventional C_pm expression is built up by measuring mean deviation and process variances for on-line application. However, if C_pm is used for the process capability analysis for process design, an erroneous C_pm value is found and an inappropriate process design is ended. Thus, the proposed process capability expression revised from the conventional C_pm in consideration of the balance between tolerance cost and quality loss has been developed. This development is the main contribution of this research and, with this development, the appropriate mean and tolerance values can be determined simultaneously prior to the real production process so as to maximise the proposed process capability value. The production is then processed with the pre-determined mean and tolerance values in a real production process. The expectation after process realisation is that the produced responses will be the best of all the alternatives in terms of quality and cost, and that the process capability value obtained after the real production process will be close to the proposed process capability value maximised prior to the real production process.     

Generic research for design of made-to-order engineering products

The paper identifies those design research issues which, while being of particular interest to the made-to-order (MTO) sector, have a wide applicability. An overview of the Newcastle EDC research programme is provided and the research topics are set in the context of two themes— design strategies and design integrity. The process of adapting the results of research aimed at producing generic results in a form suitable for application to specific product types is illustrated by describing two projects in detail. Finally, the hetrogenous nature of the Newcastle EDC environment is described and particular references are made to industrial collaboration, technology transfer, training and education.     

Is designing one search or two? A model of design thinking involving symbolism and connectionism

In this paper, designing is interpreted as a combination of two searches: a shape restructuring search and a knowledge transforming search. During the first phase, designers or computer-aided design systems search for alternative ways to interpret for the current design state by restructuring shapes in terms of emergent subshapes; it is close to the connectionist processing which we can only slightly sense. During the second phase, designers or computer systems search for alternative rule applications in order to transform the interpreted current state into the next one that matches the formal and functional requirements; it is close to symbolic processing which we can sense, clearly and cognitively.