Papers by Sven Matthiesen
DS 82: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE15), Great Expectations: Design Teaching, Research & Enterprise, Loughborough, UK, 03-04.09.2015, 2015
To fulfil the demands of modern product development processes, nowadays engineers have to interac... more To fulfil the demands of modern product development processes, nowadays engineers have to interact with the domains of mechanical, electrical and software engineering. Due to this, their day-today business in practice is strongly characterized by working with different departments and stakeholders out of different disciplines. For improving their communication and to build up a common understanding, an interdisciplinary model language is needed. The Systems Modelling Language (SysML) is a language for modelling these interdisciplinary technical aspects of a system. This paper introduces the revise of an educational teaching approach for SysML presented in 2014 [1]. It is called SysKIT 2.0. First findings on the learning experience and the modelling results will be presented in this paper. The current approach was taught for the first time in a multidisciplinary course, where the students have lectures, exercises and a development project. In their development project the students have to use SysML for modelling-concepts, prototypes, validation and optimization. This paper presents the revised concept of SysKIT. The modifications compared to the first published concept are pointed out and explained. Further the paper analyzes the modelling techniques of different students groups and summarizes statements about the benefits. These findings were made by interviewing and observing the SysMLtrained teams using SysML during the development project.
Springer eBooks, 2015
ABSTRACT In order to understand the engineers’ behavior while designing it needs to be revealed h... more ABSTRACT In order to understand the engineers’ behavior while designing it needs to be revealed how the designer perceives function-shape-relations of a tech-nical system. Eye tracking is an adequate method to observe the proceed-ings of the human analyzing technical systems. However, further infor-mation for concluding on the de-signer’s perception is needed. Well-established methods in order to elicit further implicit and tacit knowledge are think-aloud approaches. The combination think-aloud and eye tracking is not yet observed in detail; especially how think-aloud influences the eye movements and which additional data is gained in the context of engineer-ing design research. This paper presents an eye tracking study, which compares two think-aloud methods, concurrent and retrospective think-aloud, in combination with eye tracking. The results show no significant influence on the eye movements. However, the two think-aloud approach-es generate differing contents of verbalizations and complement the rec-orded gaze data with different scopes.
Design Studies, Nov 1, 2020
Concepts of problem and solution space are used to describe the design process. In this paper, co... more Concepts of problem and solution space are used to describe the design process. In this paper, confirmation bias is presented as an influencing factor on the problem space. Protocol and eye tracking data are used to assess information acquisition, misinterpretation and their effect on designers. The results show that disconfirming and neutral information is misinterpreted as confirming, leading to the acceptance of false problem causes. Low visual attention is a possible cause for this. Whilst information recognized as disconfirming is usually interpreted correctly. These results suggest that designers should more often use disconfirming evidence to challenge and refine their image of the problem space.
Procedia CIRP, 2021
In today's business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbr... more In today's business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product families, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach.
Konstruktion, 2021
Inhalt Treten Probleme am technischen System auf, muss die Problemursache verstanden werden, bevo... more Inhalt Treten Probleme am technischen System auf, muss die Problemursache verstanden werden, bevor konstruktive Maßnahmen umgesetzt werden. Sonst entstehen Konstruktionen, die nicht das Problem lösen. Bei der Problemanalyse können unbemerkte Denkfehler auftreten, die eine Identifikation der tatsächlichen Ursache verhindern. Zur Überwindung eines besonders relevanten Denkfehlers, des Bestätigungsfehlers, wird in anderen Fachdisziplinen die Methode Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) angewendet. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt die Anpassung und Evaluation der ACH-Methode innerhalb einer Schulung, um Herausforderungen bei der Problemanalyse in der Konstruktion zu überwinden. Die Methode wurde von den Teilnehmern als sehr gut bewertet und unterstützte sie bei der Problemlösung.
In engineering design education several studies had been made to understand the differences betwe... more In engineering design education several studies had been made to understand the differences between how novice and experienced designers approach design tasks. As a central finding it is described that novice designers tend to use a particular pattern of trial and error whereas experienced designers use particular design strategies. One essential part of these design strategies are visual analysing strategies. The identification of such strategies is a challenging research task and conventional research methods like interviews, document analysis and protocol studies are currently reaching their limits regarding the accurateness and validity of measuring data. At this point eye tracking analysis provides the opportunity to decisively improve the research of experts' strategies and thus allows a more sophisticated support of novice designer in engineering design education. This paper presents first results of eye tracking experiments that are presently conducted with novice and experienced mechanical engineers to gain additional insights in their visual strategies when analysing design representations (e.g. technical drawings). Based on the results it finally is discussed how identified visual strategies can be trained in design education in order to support the students' understanding of design representations.
This research suggests a new approach in early stages of product development, aiming at a lightwe... more This research suggests a new approach in early stages of product development, aiming at a lightweight orientated functional concept design. Based on the systematic approaches of target costing and value engineering a functional analysis is proposed to match mass and function. This allows the identification of where the most promising weight reductions could be achieved without focusing single components. Search fields for further investigation are identified based on the resulting weight of functions. By including the significance of functions for internal and external customers this approach points out opportunities for product optimizations. Furthermore, the created data enables a systematic way to evaluate the target weight of new concepts and makes a selection easier. This proposed approach was validated in two projects regarding a car climate control system and a high voltage battery for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. This method raises the awareness to lightweight potential within early product design and determines target values for weight, cost and volume of new concepts.
The Karlsruhe Education Model for Industrial Product Development-KaLeP (Karlsruher Lehrmodell für... more The Karlsruhe Education Model for Industrial Product Development-KaLeP (Karlsruher Lehrmodell für Produktentwicklung)-is a general education concept orientated at the real industrial development process and designed to promote competence in product development. Since 1996 the Institute for Mechanical Design and Automotive Engineering-University of Karlsruhe (TH)-was developed a new education concept, which was already being used during the training of design engineers in 1998. In particular, the changing working environment of industrial companies today is taken into consideration. The lecture 'Mechanical Design' is the basic component of the KaLeP-Model, which covers the constructive basics. The summer semester of 1999 marked the beginning of this new concept. Right from the start, the lecture was supported by an accompanying workshop, the goal of this workshop is to build up important skills, such as the capacity for teamwork, the ability to comprehend and to organise as well as to develop the student's creativity, skills which are mostly neglected in today's academic education. However, with two additional components-Basics in Product Development and Integrated Product Development-based on the lecture mentioned above, high-level training as a design engineer in product development can be achieved. Those components are explained thoroughly in (2).
Springer eBooks, Dec 14, 2021
The analysis of technical systems is the basis for a successful product development. Only a detai... more The analysis of technical systems is the basis for a successful product development. Only a detailed understanding of the design problem allows the synthesis of a successful solution. To synthesize an improved design, the design engineer must mentally relate the system's function and behavior to the system designa challenging task where many assumptions arise. We already conducted a preliminary study to identify success factors in the analysis. Based on the findings of this, we have set up the following hypotheses. (H1) A structured verbalization of one's own understanding of a technical system helps to identify gaps and mistakes in the own analysis. (H2) Verifying own assumptions about the function and behavior of a technical system improves the quality of the analysis. To test the hypothesizes we conducted an eye tracking study with two realistic design tasks, representing a functional analysis and a synthesis-driven analysis. Concurrent Think Aloud is used to elicit information on the participants' thoughts and insights. Eye Tracking is deployed to record the participants' point of gaze and therefore the area of the design, which the participant is analyzing. The combination of the Eye Tracking data with the transcribed Concurrent Think Aloud allows a detailed examination of the analysis approaches. After the participants finished the tasks, they answered a questionnaire to ascertain their understanding of the assigned problem. Success in the analysis is determined by the use of the participants explanation (functional analysis) and the questionnaire (synthesis-driven analysis). Two groups participated in this study to consider differences in the participants' experience-11 design engineers and 13 mechanical engineering students. (H1) In the results we found no evidence that a structured verbalization of one's own understanding of a technical system helps to identify gaps and mistakes in the own analysis. (H2) We found evidence that verifying assumptions on a system's function and behavior enhances the completeness and correctness of the analysis. Although we also found a few cases, where the verification has led to worse results. It seems to be helpful to make several assumptions and to choose the most likely explanation based on the available facts. A procedure that seems logical but was only used by very few participants.
Diese Schulungsunterlage stellt eine Einf{\"u}hrung in SysML dar. Es werden jedoch nur die w... more Diese Schulungsunterlage stellt eine Einf{\"u}hrung in SysML dar. Es werden jedoch nur die wichtigsten Diagramme und Modellelemente der SysML vorgestellt. Fur die intensive Arbeit mit SysML wird auf die SysML Spezifikation und auf Fachliteratur verwiesen.
Proceedings of the Design Society, Jul 27, 2021
Due to the falling costs of computational resources and the increasing potential of data acquisit... more Due to the falling costs of computational resources and the increasing potential of data acquisition, interest in digital twins, a virtual copy of the physical original, and their industrial application is increasing. Nevertheless, there is limited published work on how to support the process of physical to virtual twinning and what its key aspects are. The aim of this study is to present insights with regards to physical to virtual twinning gained from modelling projects in mechatronic product development. We conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with members of modelling projects. In the surveys and interviews we identified how physical products and virtual models were linked, which virtual models were used and which general challenges and key aspects are considered important by the project members. Our findings show that the key characteristics that pose challenges to modelling regarding physical to virtual twinning are model granularity, model validation, and model integration and interconnectivity.
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Papers by Sven Matthiesen