REFLECTIONS ON A CONCURRENT DESIGN METHODOLOGY - A CASE-STUDY IN WEARABLE COMPUTER DESIGN

At Carnegie Mellon, we have designed and manufactured three generation s of wearable, mobile computers. Each new generation of wearable compu ter has been designed within approximately one semester by an interdis ciplinary design class taught at the Engineering Design Research Cente r (EDRC). Over the semesters that the course has been taught, an inter disciplinary concurrent design methodology has evolved. In this paper, we briefly present the design process for the Navigator, the third ge neration of wearable computers. We use this process to illustrate the needs of a multidisciplinary design team, to anticipate the needs of a distributed design team using a novel manufacturing process, and to r eflect on the interplay between the practice of design and the evoluti on of our design methods. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd