Open 2013: A New Creativity Tool: Visual function mapping
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This document proposes a visual mapping approach to functionally decompose products and communicate engineering design ideas. It notes that defining functions is a challenge for students and engineers. The approach minimizes the number of elementary functions, maps them to existing functional basis frameworks like TRIZ and NIST, and represents function flows visually using icons. Examples show how daily activities and a memory car seat module can be broken down and depicted visually. The approach aims to improve cross-language communication and decrease clarification needs in engineering design processes.
Open 2013: A New Creativity Tool: Visual function mapping
- 1. Visual Function Mapping Rebeca Béliard & Darrell Kleinke University of Detroit Mercy
- 2. http://blog.mindjet.com/2012/05/between-minds-left-brain-vs-right-brain-thinkers/
- 3. The Problem Students, designers and engineers alike have poor function-definition skills. Language barriers in today’s global marketplace are a great incentive for better communication. Engineers often rely on visual methods to relay information that is difficult to vocalize, we are not so creatively handicapped after all!
- 4. The Solution
- 5. Background Engineering design textbooks emphasize the importance of the early stages of the design process. However, the critical discussion to decompose and analyze the functions of a product is often lightly explored. Where else does a young engineer learn to develop such a skill?
- 6. Background ✱ TRIZ, one of the most robust and well- documented problem-solving methods, which relies on many tools to match a desired solution to an already-solved problem. ✱ However, this may be a hindrance to creativity and idea innovation because the open-endedness of a solution fades with the assumption that the problem has already been solved. ✱ In addition, the many tools and steps within TRIZ can make the method obtuse and difficult to digest.
- 7. Background
- 8. Approach ✱Minimize number of elementary functions. ✱Map to TRIZ and the NIST’s functional basis proposal. ✱Create pairs of functions, showing forward and backward ‘flow’ for each pair.
- 9. The Icons
- 10. The Standard
- 11. How does a visual function map look like? GETTING READY FOR WORK
- 12. Activity Map What does it take to get myself ready for work? 1. Get dressed a. Select outfit b. Change from PJ to work attire 2. Brush my teeth a. Put toothpaste & water on toothbrush b. Move toothbrush around teeth 3. Put makeup/perfume on 4. Grab lunch and purse 5. Walk out the door!
- 13. NSIT Functional Basis Text Map 1. Get dressed a. SIGNAL (sense what I want to wear, measure stylishness) b. BRANCH (Body from PJ) c. CONNECT (Body with work attire) 2. Brush my teeth a. CHANNEL (import water and toothpaste to toothbrush) b. CHANNEL (rotate/translate toothbrush around my teeth) 3. Put makeup/perfume on a. IMPORT (beauty products to my face) b. PROVISION (‘store’ makeup and perfume to stay put all day) 4. Grab lunch and purse a. CONNECT (purse and lunch to me) 5. Walk out the door! a. CHANNEL (exporting myself out of my apartment and into my car) b. CHANNEL (transferring my car from home to work)
- 16. Coffree Map = Material flow = Signal flow = Energy flow
- 17. Conventional Instant Coffee Map
- 18. Example 2: Memory Seat Module www.cadillac.com
- 19. Example 2: Memory Seat Module
- 20. Does it work? Pictogram Approach
- 21. Why does this matter? ✱ As an engineer, understanding the overall function of the product is key into finding effective and efficient solutions. ✱ The time spent communicating ideas across languages, and the time spent clarifying miscommunications could easily be decreased by relying more on a universal ‘language,’ such as pictures, numbers, and symbols, rather than spoken languages.
- 22. References O Hirtz, J., Stone, R., McAdams, D., Szykman, S. and Wood, K., 2002, “A Functional Basis for Engineering Design: Reconciling and Evolving Previous Efforts,” Research in Engineering Design. O Kasai, T., Kitamura, Y., and Mizoguchi, T., 2001, “Ontology-based Description of Functional Design Knowledge and its Use in a Functional Way Server.” O Ookubo, M., Koji, Y., Sasajima, M., Kitamura, Y., Mizogu chi, R., 2007, “Towards Interoperability between Functional Taxonomies using an Ontollogy-based Mapping”, ICED 2007. O Pahl, G., and Beitz, W., 1998, Engineering Design - a Systematic Approach. The Design Council.
Editor's Notes
- #3: Left Brain vs Right Brain
- #8: The NIST has also done some work to reconcile the most essential functions from earlier propositions. While there is disagreement on how many functions and what word describes them best, the key point is that a reader’s interpretation of those words can have different meaning.
- #21: Yes, its purpose is to stimulate and deepen a designer’s thinking. Throughout this presentation, I am sure that you thought of different ways that a function map could have been expressed, other than the ones presented. I’m going to pass around non-pictogram function maps for a car jack and the memory seat module. I have shown both versions to various people, and they spend more time thinking and looking at the picture one, while the list version usually only gets a few seconds of attention. Strings of function ‘flows’ can be dissected and swapped, enabling a designer to visualize how the product does its job.