Designing for human factors : a harmonistic knowledge-based proactive design approach

Abstract

The physical construct of a dual ontological product (DOP) is essential for those products which physically interact directly with humans, whereas the product’s emotional construct interconnects with human cognition. Multitude of human factor aspects must be considered when designing dual ontological products. To increase the product’s impact and reach, designers should also understand the requirements of potential users. There are multiple aspects encompassed within the human factors discipline which merits investigation. However, this doctoral research narrows its scope to three core aspects, namely, ergonomics aesthetic-derived emotions, and persona. These multitude of factors influence each other during product development. For this reason, besides making the designer proactively aware of the product to human factors interaction, the designer must also be supported in finding a harmonised product solution for it to be successful in the market. The outcome of the problem definition led to the development of a decision consequence-based phenomena model. This is generated from two conditions, the population majority privation phenomenon and the design-stage conflict phenomenon during product design. The population use-phase consequence (PUC) arises when a designer focuses on a specific target user group while neglecting the majority (potential) customers. This unintended consequence will untimely affect the level of product’s success in the market. The design-stage conflict consequence (DCC) leads to a factor-biased design. This conflict arises when a particular human factor aspect is given priority, at the early routine design stage, over others considered at a later design stage. This doctoral research therefore contributes a novel harmonistic design approach framework which proactively supports DOP designers to be aware of design-stage conflicts and consequences of commitments made on human factors in the use phase of the artefact. This harmonistic knowledge-based framework also supports designers to develop balanced product designs from human factors perspective. The proposed framework takes a user-centred approach, placing designers and DOP users at the framework’s core. The framework acts as a support to the designer, where it couples the designer’s expertise with the framework’s knowledge to proactively support product design decision making. A prototype computer-based design support tool, constructed on the underlying concepts of the approach framework, has been developed and implemented on a machine learning and harmonistic knowledge-based system. The computer-based tool exploits information collected directly from potential customers to proactively assist, guide, and motivate product designers. The kernel consists of the harmonising engine, where its task is to harmonise possible design provisional solutions to create a unified harmonised DOP product solution. The prototype support tool has been evaluated with DOP designers. The results obtained from this evaluation have shown that the approach and design computational-based tool meet their goals, are beneficial, and are required in design engineering practice.