Environment-based Design Research Articles

Environment-driven evolution analysis of a product: A case study of braking system evolution

In response to evolving societal and technical demands, this research explores the dynamic landscape of product evolution, focusing on the case study of braking systems. Acknowledging the critical role of product evolution analysis in design phases, the study introduces the Environment-Based Design (EBD) methodology. EBD emphasizes environmental analysis before delving into product specifics, employing tools like Recursive Object Model (ROM) diagrams and questioning-and-answering analyses. The paper systematically unfolds with a literature review highlighting various design methodologies, followed by the EBD application in a braking system evolution analysis. Trends in environment components are dissected, emphasizing the increasing influence of the human environment. The discussion underlines the significance of analyzing environment components in product evolution and asserts EBD’s applicability. Despite limitations, such as the exclusive focus on braking systems, the study contributes to understanding product evolution dynamics and advocates for the continued exploration of EBD across diverse products and cultural contexts.

ENVIRONMENT-BASED DESIGN (EBD): USING ONLY NECESSARY KNOWLEDGE FOR DESIGNER CREATIVITY

AbstractDesign is a highly nonlinear chaotic dynamic process with many possible solutions, which requires enormous knowledge for designers. This paper investigates how environment-based design (EBD) methodology can help designers use only necessary knowledge for their creativity based on three methods: information search, knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. The methods are applied in an aircraft pylon design, which is evaluated by two aerospace design specialists. The paper discussed the different roles of EBD for novice and expert designers in regard to overcoming emotion and knowledge barriers to achieving designer creativity.

A Hybrid Semantic Networks Construction Framework for Engineering Design

Abstract This paper proposes a novel framework for building semantic networks from a seed design statement using Recursive Object Modeling (ROM), Word2Vec language modeling, and vector semantic-based method. Semantic Scholar API was used to retrieve abstracts of scientific papers to build ROM-based Semantic Networks to address the design problem implied in the seed design statement, following Environment Analysis from Environment-Based Design (EBD) methodology. The proposed framework was applied to construct the semantic network for a project to design aircraft braking systems, which demonstrates the framework's efficiency. The presented research makes two major contributions: a ROM-based phrase extractor and a domain-specific language model, which is trained on the automatically collected literature abstracts. Using a manually created and assessed truth set containing 100 pairs of abstract-key phrases, the phrase extractor was evaluated by benchmarking it with two existing off-the-shelf key phrase extraction algorithms: TextRank and Rake. The ROM-based phrase extractor extracted most key phrases from target domains and showed higher precision, recall, and F-1 scores than other methods. Meanwhile, the trained project-specific language model was evaluated using the NASA thesaurus. We randomly sampled 457 pairs of connected domain-specific terms related to aircraft braking and landing knowledge. Our Skip-gram model was compared with Google's pre-trained word2vec model and a baseline word2vec model. The results demonstrated that our language model could detect the most pairs of concepts from the NASA thesaurus. The generated semantic network can be applied to design information retrieval, computer-aided design idea generation, cross-domain communication support system, and designer training tool.

Environment-Based Life Cycle Decomposition (eLCD): Adaptation of EBD to Sustainable Design

As sustainability becomes increasingly important, product design is taking a proactive role in producing products that are both useful and sustainable. This paper introduces and discusses a tool named Environment-based life cycle decomposition (eLCD) to adapt the Environment-based Design (EBD) methodology to sustainable design. The eLCD brings to EBD three major features: 1) a holistic environment structure for sustainable conceptual design, 2) an effective and efficient tool for collecting information for sustainability decision-making, and 3) an analysis tool that takes sustainability as an integral part of the design rather than as a burden. The environment of a product is everything except the product itself, which can be defined in three dimensions, namely, environment types, life cycle events, and life cycle time. The environment types are designated as natural, built (including physical artifact and digital artifact), economic, and social environment. The eLCD provides an effective template for information collection to support the design decision-making process. The effectiveness of eLCD is demonstrated by its application to the upscaling of a wind turbine, where an energy storage system is introduced to make full use of wind energy with the least waste in serving the electricity demand.

Data Quality Criteria for Urban Waste Management Policy-Making Using Environment-based Design*

Existing data quality criteria often focus on the quality of the data itself while overlooking other aspects such as the relevance between data and downstream tasks. Furthermore, prior to data collection, policy-makers lack ground truths or labelled data, and are unable to filter data using quantitative criteria. To ensure the collection of reliable, necessary, and sufficient data for policy-making, this study derives a data-driven policy-making framework from Environment-based Design (EBD). Based on the framework, we present five qualitative criteria called RULER (Reliable, Uncoupled, Lifecycle, Environment, Relevant) to evaluate and filter data for data-driven waste management and policy-marking. A case study from Beijing, China shows how to apply these criteria, through which a relatively reliable, sufficient, and necessary data list is given as result.

ENVIRONMENT-BASED DESIGN (EBD) APPROACH TO IDENTIFY CRITICAL ISSUES IN MANAGING MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE: NAIROBI, KENYAN CASE STUDY

Abstract. As the urban population grows and the global economy develops, municipal solid waste management (MSWM) has become an increasingly prominent global issue. MSWM is particularly difficult in developing countries due to its high cost and time-consuming nature. The Environment-based design (EBD) can potentially contribute to global MSWM by reducing costs and increasing efficiency, especially in helping developing countries identify critical issues in MSWM. This paper uses and demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the EBD method to analyze and identify critical issues in MSWM, using the city of Nairobi as a case study. This paper contains the first two of EBD's three activities: environment analysis and conflict identification, during the design problem period, design knowledge, and design solutions simultaneously and interdependently evolve as a part of the environment. The comparison with the existing literature confirms that the conclusions reached are, to some extent, reliable, time-saving, and less costly, which will offer a possibility to solve the problem of MSWM in impoverished areas.

Using Environment Based Design Method to Improve Mechanical Curriculum Teaching

ABSTRACT This paper regards the mechanical curriculum teaching as a design problem and uses environment-based design (EBD) method to solve it. First, environment components and their relations of the mechanical curriculum are found out by recursive object model (ROM). Then, conflicts in the teaching process are identified by analysing the above relations. Finally, solutions for solving these conflicts are generated. The proposed method is applied to mechanical manufacturing technology foundation (MMTF) curriculum with 217 students in grade 2016 in China. The solutions used in MMTF include decreasing the mental stress of students, developing more experimental projects, applying real cases and projects, adopting variety of assessments and so on. Compared with the performance of students in grade 2015, the average attendance rate and final scores are both increased, and three of the four achievement values of graduation attributes are risen. The practical example illustrates the EBD method is effective in improving curriculum teaching.

Structure design of camellia oleifera fruit sheller by EBD method

In this paper, through the analysis of the characteristics of camellia oleifera fruit (COF), a sheller with low damage rate of tea seeds, easy to manufacture and integrating shelling and screening functions is designed based on environment based design (EBD) method. The main structure of the COF sheller is designed and calculated. This design can provide a reference for the research of related machinery in camellia oleifera industry.

Environment: The First Thing to Look at in Conceptual Design

This paper aims to addresses three questions related to conceptual design: 1) Why is environment important? 2) What is environment? and 3) How to analyze environment? Unlike product-, function (affordance)-, or user-centered methodologies, it is argued that the known environment of a product to be designed must be the first thing to be looked at in a conceptual design. The environment can be categorized into three types: the natural, the built and the human. A complete set of environment for a design is implied in the lifecycle of a product to be designed, which can be further defined by lifecycle activities in terms of time. The analysis of environment consists of three activities: 1) determine decision directions by asking design questions based on a design problem statement; 2) clarify the design problem statement by answering questions following the decision direction; and 3) formulate an environment system from a design problem statement. The process is driven by asking the right questions by analyzing the ROM diagram of the design problem statement. The answers to the questions follow the lifecycle analysis of the product and its environment components. This paper completes a detailed procedure for Environment Analysis, which is the one of the three activities in Environment-Based Design (EBD).

Environment-Based Design (EBD): A Methodology for Innovative and Creative Design

Environment-Based Design (EBD): A Methodology for Innovative and Creative Design

Innovative Design of Burn Scar Cryotherapy Device Based on Environment-Based Design Methodology

Innovative Design of Burn Scar Cryotherapy Device Based on Environment-Based Design Methodology

How to promote Chinese primary and secondary school teachers to use ICT to develop high-quality teaching activities

In China, teachers’ ability to adopt information and communication technology (ICT) when teaching is far from satisfying. Previous studies on teachers’ ability to integrate ICT and teaching in China ignored the factors in the process of teachers’ ICT application and lacked the systematic analysis of the factors. ICT application is affected by complex factors and thus needs to be systematically explored. This study surveyed 3730 Chinese primary and secondary school teachers, and adopted the environment-based design, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling to analyze the factors influencing teachers’ usage of ICT to develop teaching activities and proposed a model of the influencing factors of ICT usage. This model indicated that application willingness, application frequency, ICT-based teaching competence, helpfulness degree and application context are the five major factors that influence teachers’ usage of ICT to develop high-quality teaching activities. According to the status of teachers’ ICT application in China, this study suggested strengthening teachers’ willingness and enriching application contexts of ICT. Implications of this study will be discussed.

Optimising the DTLS handshake design for TEE enabled sensor nodes

This paper focuses on highlighting the vulnerabilities of DTLS handshake process and then optimising the handshake process of the DTLS protocol to prevent the software-based attacks in the smart sensor client and sensors (resource servers). We discussed the scenarios where the handshake process is prone to software attacks and proposed the trusted execution environment-based design of the DTLS handshake to enhance the communication security by eliminating the risk of intermediate keying materials being exposed to a non-secure environment. Our design also considers the resource constrained nature of the sensor nodes and thus split the handshake process such that the memory footprint of the implementation does not overload the TEE. We implemented a DTLS client and a DTLS server on a TEE enabled hardware and compared the performance thereof. Our preliminary experimental results show significant gain for memory footprint, but with a minor penalty in handshake time consumption.

Optimising the DTLS handshake design for TEE enabled sensor nodes

This paper focuses on highlighting the vulnerabilities of DTLS handshake process and then optimising the handshake process of the DTLS protocol to prevent the software-based attacks in the smart sensor client and sensors (resource servers). We discussed the scenarios where the handshake process is prone to software attacks and proposed the trusted execution environment-based design of the DTLS handshake to enhance the communication security by eliminating the risk of intermediate keying materials being exposed to a non-secure environment. Our design also considers the resource constrained nature of the sensor nodes and thus split the handshake process such that the memory footprint of the implementation does not overload the TEE. We implemented a DTLS client and a DTLS server on a TEE enabled hardware and compared the performance thereof. Our preliminary experimental results show significant gain for memory footprint, but with a minor penalty in handshake time consumption.

WHICH DESIGN METHODOLOGIES ARE EFFECTIVE TO SUPPORT A CAPSTONE PROJECT IN AEROSPACE DESIGN ENGINEERING?

Abstract – Considering the challenges in the aerospace industry, the NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering (NCADE) has launched its own version of a final year undergraduate engineering capstone project at Concordia University. NCADE’s objective is to expose students to the immense complexity of an aircraft design, thereby better meeting the industry needs of newly graduated students. Four design methodologies (i.e., systems engineering – SE, quality function deployment – QFD, theory of inventive problem solving – TRIZ, and environment-based design – EBD) were evaluated in the context of the NCADE project to answer the research question such as "to what extent do these methodologies provide effective support across the activities in the capstone project?" The evaluation was subjective discussing whether the design methodologies support the activities in the project. From the evaluation, it can be concluded that the studied design methodologies perform poorly to support the activities in the capstone project. Therefore, future research should investigate a better support for the capstone project to achieve NCADE’s goals.

A novel method to model the effect of environmental constraint of geometry in the mechanism design

Few studies have considered the effect of environmental constraints throughout the entire design process of mechanical systems. Neglecting such effect might lead to misunderstanding the kinematic performance of the mechanical systems. In our work, an environment-based design concept was proposed by using passive limbs to model and analyze geometrical constraints in each step of the theoretical design process. Redesigning of a thrust system in a shield machine is taken as an example for better demonstration of this design approach. A new equivalent model of the thrust system was synthesized by using passive limbs to express environmental constraints of geometry based on the shield behavior. The uniform kinematic model was developed for the integrated equivalent mechanism of the thrust system. The effectiveness of the passive limbs in expressing environmental constraints was then evaluated by kinematical analysis. A singularity analysis was performed to assess the consistency between the equivalent model and a real thrust system. The reachable angular workspace was also analyzed to demonstrate the influence of the passive limbs as an example of environment-based parameter design. A motion simulation was performed to demonstrate the improvement of the forward kinematics by using the passive limbs to solve the singularity problem. A dexterity performance index based on the proposed model was conducted to demonstrate the kinematical property of the thrust system.

Environment-Based Design (EBD): a Methodology for Transdisciplinary Design+

Environment-Based Design (EBD): a Methodology for Transdisciplinary Design+

Aims and Scope of JIDPS: Coping with the Challenges in Transdisciplinary Design

In my last editorial for Vol 18 No 4 of the journal (Zeng, 2014), the Aims and Scope of Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science (JIDPS) were summarized into a framework of three levels covering the research findings related to transdisciplinary notions of design and process: 1) understanding of design and process crossing boundaries of natural, human, and built environments, 2) principles, methods, and tools, and 3) applications of design and process science to engineering and social problems. In the last issue, three papers respectively addressing these issues were included. A transdisciplinary design is a design that requires knowledge, expertise, experiences, and tools from different disciplines. There are many challenges in conducting a transdisciplinary design project. First, it is usually difficult for experts from different domains to communicate smoothly due to the different terminology and models that different domains use to describe the world. Second, due to the lack of an all-inclusive brain, the acquisition of relevant knowledge distributed in different domains can be a lengthy process. Third, the solution direction cannot be well defined before enough knowledge has been obtained while the necessary domain knowledge cannot be effectively and efficiently obtained before a solution direction has been well defined. This issue will look into the concept of transdisciplinary design and associated methodologies and applications. The first paper, titled “Environment-Based Design (EBD): a methodology for transdisciplinary design” by Zeng introduces a methodology to deal with transdisciplinary design problems. In the EBD methodology (Zeng, 2011), design is an activity that aims to change an existing environment to a desired one by creating a new artefact into the existing environment. As a result, design starts from the environment, serves the environment, and changes the environment. The transdisciplinary nature of a design can thus be taken into account through different kinds of environment and environment interactions across different disciplines. The EBD methodology includes three interdependent activities: environment analysis, conflict identification, and solution generation. Throughout the entire design process, any newly generated design solution will be viewed as an environment component for the succeeding design activities. The design process continues until no more undesired conflict exists in the environment. A transdisciplinary design problem can be decomposed through the partitioning of the environment implied in the problem description. Underlying the EBD methodology is a question strategy based on semantic analysis enabled by the Recursive Object Model (ROM). The questions generated throughout the design process will guide designers to collect information from different domains and to integrate the information into the present design context. In addition, this paper also proposes four criteria

Environment Based Design of Services

Design comes from an environment, serves the environment, and changes the environment (Zeng, 2011). A product would resolve conflict(s) in its environment by providing certain services while becoming a part of the environment once having been realized. The environment of a service includes the subjects to be served, the infrastructure to support the service, and the resources available to the service. This issue includes four papers addressing different aspects in delivering a service to their respective environments. The first paper, titled “A hybrid classifier with a binning method for network application identification” by Moon et al, aims to develop a method for the accurate identification of network traffic related to an online service. This research could equip web services with a better infrastructure by enabling the implementation of a variety of crucial functions such as accounting and analysis, network operations and management, and security. A framework is developed to incorporate multiple classification techniques to offer an accurate identification of applications with greater flexibility. Particularly, a hybrid classifier is designed to perform the classification based on machine learning with payload information and statistical flow-level features. The authors also propose an optimization technique with a novel binning method that partitions the given application set into multiple subgroups to improve the overall identification accuracy. The second paper, titled “A reference model for privacy protection in social networking service” by Deng et al, addresses privacy issue in social network services (SNS). This paper is based on an observation that users have a great motivation to share their personal updates in a social media in order to maintain their contacts while they still have a strong need to protect their privacy in order to prevent all kinds of frauds from attackers. By using Environment Based Design (EBD) methodology, the authors propose a reference model for privacy protection, which encompasses factors such as user’s behaviour, SNS provider’s security policy, and information management strategy. Major challenges and related solutions are identified to provide a holistic framework to resolve the conflict between information sharing and privacy protection. The third paper, titled “Hospital healthcare service risk assessment and management with Risk-OMeter software metrics for a field application” by Sahinoglu et al, implements a practical methodology for assessing and improving the patient-centered quality of care in healthcare services. This paper is focused on the assessment and management of patient-centered quality of care risk by using a software system, Risk-O-Meter (RoM), through a simulation analysis. As such, it provides a patient-centred metric of hospital health-care risk, and risk mitigation advice for vulnerabilities and threats associated with automated management of healthcare quality in a hospital or clinic. A questionnaire survey is then

A Reference Model for Privacy Protection in Social Networking Service

Social media has become a popular means of communication thanks to the advancement of computer network and web technology. Social networking service (SNS) provides a virtual platform for users to realize their personal/professional purposes. Users have a great motivation to share their personal updates in social media in order to maintain their contacts. In the meantime, users have a strong need to protect their privacy in order to prevent all kinds of frauds from attackers. In the existing literature, many research efforts address privacy protection issues by employing computer security technology. To our best knowledge, it is the lack of a framework to propose a holistic framework of privacy protection encompassing other factors, such as user's behaviour, SNS provider's security policy, and information management strategy. In this background, this paper aims to derive a reference model for privacy protection in social networking service by using Environment-Based Design (EBD) methodology. A systematic SNS environment analysis is conducted to identify the major challenges and to organize coherent solutions.