Flowchart-assisted function analysis of products to support teaching of the exact sciences

Abstract

To reintroduce function analysis into the curriculum of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), we developed a systematic approach suitable for interaction-intensive products. By strengthening the link between high-level design considerations and exact-science-based engineering calculations, our goal was to make the students more aware of the relevance of the exact sciences for designers. We started out from the problem that conventional function analysis approaches are difficult to apply to products interacting with users, while the user-oriented approaches that have come to replace function analysis in our curriculum do not easily connect to engineering aspects. The proposed approach involves a procedure to extract functions from the process tree that our students commonly use in design projects, and which allows mapping of transformations performed by the user to functions of the product. Putting functions on a gradual scale from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ points out directions for reconsideration. The approach is ‘open’: established methods for idea generation based on functions, and for configuration and analysis of transformation processes can be used in combination. It was embedded into a new, recently developed engineering-oriented course. Student evaluations have shown that the new course more effectively communicates the relevance of exact sciences than previously taught courses did. In the near future, our plan is to make the approach suitable for application in design projects. Another aspect to be addressed in future work is assessing the impact of our approach on the competencies that our students are developing.