Interaction design for teaching visually impaired students

This paper reports on the findings for a study on improving interaction design for teaching visually impaired students. The crux of the problem is the ability to draw and understand diagrams. The cognitive issues are often underestimated with insufficient attention being given to the use of metaphors, etc. and "one size fits all solutions" are often the norm. The findings of the original seed funded project have led to design criteria and to an application for a large scale project, to produce generic tools and to enable multi-modal teaching and learning, with connotations for the mentally as well as physically impaired.

Cognitive issues in information visualisation design for interaction for the visually impaired

This paper reports on the findings of a study on improving interaction design for visually impaired students, focusing upon the cognitive criteria for information visualisation.

A computational model for defect prediction in shape castings based on the interaction of free surface flow, heat transfer, and solidification phenomena

High-integrity castings require sophisticated design and manufacturing procedures to ensure they are essentially macrodefect free. Unfortunately, an important class of such defects—macroporosity, misruns, and pipe shrinkage—are all functions of the interactions of free surface flow, heat transfer, and solidication in complex geometries. Because these defects arise as an interaction of the preceding continuum phenomena, genuinely predictive models of these defects must represent these interactions explicitly. This work describes an attempt to model the formation of macrodefects explicitly as a function of the interacting continuum phenomena in arbitrarily complex three-dimensional geometries. The computational approach exploits a compatible set of finite volume procedures extended to unstructured meshes. The implementation of the model is described together with its testing and a measure of validation. The model demonstrates the potential to predict reliably shrinkage macroporosity, misruns, and pipe shrinkage directly as a result of interactions among free-surface fluid flow, heat transfer, and solidification.

A framework to integrate design knowledge reuse and requirements management in engineering design

This paper presents a framework to integrate requirements management and design knowledge reuse. The research approach begins with a literature review in design reuse and requirements management to identify appropriate methods within each domain. A framework is proposed based on the identified requirements. The framework is then demonstrated using a case study example: vacuum pump design. Requirements are presented as a component of the integrated design knowledge framework. The proposed framework enables the application of requirements management as a dynamic process, including capture, analysis and recording of requirements. It takes account of the evolving requirements and the dynamic nature of the interaction between requirements and product structure through the various stages of product development.