Integrating social product development to improve design communication in engineering design

Engineering design requires coordinated high-level integration and intricate interactions, including significant trans-sectoral cooperation, knowledge sharing, and communication between experts in interrelated fields, such as design, engineering, and branding. The process of engineering design has, therefore, become increasingly knowledge intensive and highly collaborative, involving networks of stakeholders with different technical and social backgrounds who co-design products and require continuous and reliable information and knowledge flows between all involved. Design communication refers to the transmission of information and knowledge between stakeholders involved in engineering design; its effectiveness is crucial in ensuring the success of engineering design projects and in guaranteeing mutual understanding between stakeholders. Social Product Development (SPD) uses social and collaborative methods known as SPD tenants (e.g., crowdsourcing, open innovation, and cloud-based design) to capture and share information and knowledge and acts as a co-creation mechanism for companies wishing to engage multi-disciplinary stakeholders in engineering design. Most SPD literature, to date, has focused on the product ideation phase of product development where ideas can be captured at low cost from external stakeholders. Far less is known, however, about how companies integrate SPD tenants into engineering design, where initial product ideas are transformed into final designs. This research program encompasses three interconnected and complementary projects that will advance our understanding of: (1) the motivations for companies and multi-disciplinary experts involved in engineering design to engage with SPD initiatives, (2) how companies integrate SPD tenants into their engineering design activities, and (3) designing and developing human-centered SPD platforms, providing evidence-based recommendations to SPD software companies operating in Canada. The program will deliver: (1) a classification model that predicts stakeholders’ behaviors in engineering design activities when using SPD tenants based on their motivational differences, (2) a design communication methodology and SPD strategy to increase company participation and engagement with stakeholders involved in engineering design; (3) algorithms for identifying the expertise of multi-disciplinary stakeholders, (4) software to automatically capture and extract knowledge from engineering design activities; and (5) an SPD platform, and integrated assessment tool, that enables companies to select the most appropriate SPD tenant(s) to use in their engineering design processes. These deliverables will lead to a more sustained social and collaborative innovation culture in Canadian companies - recognizing Industry Canada's goal of driving "commercialization and growth in the Canadian manufacturing sector" and will help Canadian manufacturing grow its $174 billion contribution to national GDP.