Reflections on QuestVis: A Visualization System for an Environmental Sustainability Model

Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering

Benjamin

et al. 2015

A large portion of design activity involves applying previous design knowledge in order to solve new problems. Therefore, facilitating eco-conscious exploration of archived designs is needed for advancing sustainable product design. It is thus necessary to create integrated exploration tools that share common data representations for design and sustainability-related product metadata. This can allow designers to observe covariations in design data and develop engineering intuition with regards to environmental sustainability performance. In this work, we present a framework for relating sustainability and product metadata using taxonomy-based representations of lifecycle data. This facilitates simultaneous visualization of environmental indicators along with part similarities. To demonstrate this framework, we implement shapeSIFT, an interactive multidimensional visualization tool for eco-conscious design exploration. shapeSIFT uses a visual analytics-based approach to represent part metadata and environmental indicators. This facilitates query-based dynamic exploration of part repositories.

A Framework for Visualization-Driven Eco-Conscious Design Exploration

Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering

Benjamin

et al. 2015

ShapeSift: Suggesting Sustainable Options in Design Reuse From Part Repositories

Benjamin

Volume 4: 18th Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference; 2013 ASME/IEEE International Conference on Mechatronic A

et al. 2013

ShapeSift is a framework for supporting sustainability-based decision making during selection of similar previous designs from part repositories. Our framework is designed for 3D part repositories that contain metadata pertaining to materials and manufacturing processes as well as the functionality of a given part. To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed framework we develop an example multi-dimensional visualization that encodes part similarities as well as a calculated environmental sustainability indicator. This visualization is incorporated in a prototype interface that focuses on enhancing the intuitiveness of the exploration process by the use of sketch-based retrieval.

Design Patterns for Visualization-Based Tools in Sustainable Product Design

Volume 4: 22nd Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference; 11th International Conference on Micro- And Nanosystems

Ramani

2017

Most design activities involve exploring and comparing existing designs. Thus, adopting an eco-conscious approach in the design exploration process can aid environmentally sustainable product design (SPD). One approach for supporting exploration in SPD is through tools based on information visualization (InfoVis). The use of InfoVis for SPD allows data-driven exploration of solutions that is rapid, direct, and supports investigation of questions that the designer may not have identified. Previous work has demonstrated the utility of InfoVis tools for different facets of the lifecycle, e.g. redesign, supply chain exploration, and life cycle assessment. These tools focus on projecting sustainability-related implications back to design. However, to fully realize their potential, future tools must synthesize data in a manner that helps designers view the effects of a design change on all downstream stages. Such tools will have to work across multiple data types, visual representations, and stakeholders. In this paper, we take the first steps towards addressing this challenge by formulating design patterns for visualization and interaction of product lifecycle data. These design patterns were synthesized by reviewing previous works that have successfully created visualization-based tools for SPD. The suggested * Address all correspondence devr@mit.edu design patterns can, (1) serve as a guide for creating integrated visualization-based tools for SPD, and (2) help create reusable visual components that aid in quick interface wireframing.