SBIR Phase I: Ecosystem for Learning and Team Design

This SBIR Phase I project seeks to develop an innovative software prototype that uses pages out of electronic design (e-design) notebooks to automatically assess design activities from all the five stages of the design process (requirements modeling, functional modeling, concept design, embodiment design, and detailed design). The e-design notebooks are generated using tablets, or convertible laptops, which the designers receive, or bring, at the beginning of a design project, to do all of their design work on. This software will impact the way engineering design is taught, and thus contribute to the training of strong engineering workforce, by allowing instructors, mentors or supervisors to assess performance of students or design engineers with less subjectivity and on a continual basis. In industry, the tool can be used to ensure efficient compliance with internal design processes (minimize the chance of design pitfalls), and teach effective design techniques, leading to productivity enhancements that contribute to increased competiveness, higher quality, and shorter time-to-market. The company expects to grow the annual revenues to at least $11,000,000 in six years, by offering the design ecosystem stand-alone or by licensing its assessment engine, the e-design process, to vendors of electronic lab notebooks, and in the process create at least 50 jobs. The project aim is to improve teaching, learning and practice of design processes, by automating the seemingly impossible task of assessing the quality of the design activities relative to a given design process through guiding, real-time alerts. The project presents the only learning tool capable of assessing design activities from all the five stages of the design process. The research question is "Can a software application be used to assess the outcomes of a design process?" To answer this question, three technical objectives have been formulated. These are (1) Assessment of the information gathering activities; (2) Assessment of the design process activities; and (3) Engineering of the software objects extracted from the content of e-design notebooks. Central to the ecosystem is the ability of designers to upload their documents to a cloud environment, share selected designs with their teammates, and correspond with their instructor, mentor or supervisor, subject to configurable restrictions. The ecosystem also provides means for interfacing with established tools for computer aided design (CAD) or data product management. The e-design notebooks can tell a story that extends through the stages of the design process, capturing drawings with different degree of sophistication, and can even be extended to support complex CAD files.