Providing an Overview during the Design of Complex Products

Abstract

The lack of overview is a major problem in the design of any complex product; designers’ mental processes lead to a partial and biased understanding of it. With conventional representations it is difficult to gain an even overview over the product. This paper discusses a product linkage modelling method, which was developed from earlier work on the prediction of change propagation, as a way of constructing and representing overview product models. Initial evaluation of the method has successfully occurred in two UK industrial companies.