A user-centered approach in complex engineering design environments

In complex engineering design environments, the demand for high quality products and high functionality are critical, the end-user requirements have to be integrated into the design process since the earliest design stages. In such contexts, strict design requirements related to quality, safety, and usability must be taken into account concurrently. To this aim, in this work, an integrated user-centered decision-based design method is proposed in the medical design environment context. This work is aimed at proposing a design method to be applied to complex design environments. The proposed case study is the design of an intercom device, aimed at improving patient-doctor communication in the case of bedridden patients on with helmet for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy during SARS- CoV2 pandemic emergency. Patients undergoing helmet-assisted ventilation are often immersed in a highly noisy environment, unable to fully communicate their needs to the doctors. A three-steps decision based integrated product design and process simulation are used in the early design stages, to gain optimal product designs in a user-centered design viewpoint, for novel industrial products. The first step, modular design, is aimed at defining relations between the components of the assembly in a user centered approach. Design alternatives are generated in a Design for Manufacturing and Assembly DFMA viewpoint. In the second step, the group decision making step, in a multiple criteria context, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is applied together with the fuzzy set theory, to overcome uncertainties in the verbal judgments of the decision makers. The third step is related to the simulation of the assembly and manufacturing process, with the aim of defining a final optimal design. The proposed group multicriteria decision making based design method proved to be efficient in complex user centered engineering design contexts.