Papers by Filippo Salustri
Process Mapping to Understand the Role of Human Factors in Design
Ergonomics, Jan 24, 2015
The "design for human factors" grounded theory explains "how" human factors (... more The "design for human factors" grounded theory explains "how" human factors (HF) went from a reactive, after-injury program in safety, to being proactively integrated into each step of the production design process. In this longitudinal case study collaboration with engineers and HF Specialists in a large electronics manufacturer, qualitative data (eg. meetings, interviews, observations, reflections) were analyzed using a grounded theory methodology. The central tenet in the theory is that when HF Specialists acclimated to the engineering process, language and tools, and strategically aligned HF to design and business goals of the organization, HF became a means to improve business performance. This led to engineers "pulling" HF Specialists onto their team. HF targets were adopted into engineering tools to communicate HF concerns quantitatively, drive continuous improvement, visibly demonstrate change, and lead to benchmarking. Senior management held en...
Ergonomics, 2023
This research examines the status of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) metrics in the case cont... more This research examines the status of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) metrics in the case context of product realisation in an electronics manufacturing company. Interactions with 100þ stakeholders over a five year period were thematically analysed for metrics-related views and content. A disconnect between engineering metrics and HF/E metrics was evident. Engineers and HF/E specialists expressed different understandings of the gap between the disciplines and how to generate HF/E metrics that would fit the organisation. Other emerging themes provided insight for metrics development including improving indicator relatability, considerations for communication of information, and barriers to implementation of metrics. The results led to seven recommendations to help guide practitioners in developing and refining HF/E metrics as part of an organisation's metrics system. This macroergonomic case study provides key points for consideration when developing HF/E focussed metrics to support organisations being more proactive with HF/E in work system design. Practitioner summary: Metrics' presence, stakeholder views on metrics, and metrics-related content in a case organisation were thematically analysed with a macroergonomics focus. Human factors and ergonomics metrics (HF/E) were disconnected from engineering metrics thus limiting the design team's ability to handle human factors in design. Factors influencing HF/E metrics creation and integration were identified, resulting in seven recommendations for developing HF/E metrics.
False or frivolous human rights complaints against instructors, by students unsatisfied with thei... more False or frivolous human rights complaints against instructors, by students unsatisfied with their grades, have become a growing problem in some universities. These complaints and associated lengthy investigations are a form of mobbing that is harmful to instructors’ health and wellbeing. This in turn is harmful to instructors’ families, professional relationships, the pedagogical environment and the instructors’ careers. This paper reports on a brainstorming exercise used to identify possible ideas for preventing such false claims of human rights violations. This work operates under the assumption that the institution is unwilling or unable to improve their complaint management process. The authors identified 12 viable ideas that might help reduce the probability of a student making false accusations when unsatisfied with their grades. These ideas could be clustered as “Acquiesce”, “Shift Blame”, “Interaction Monitoring”, and “Separation”. All ideas had problem associated with them...
In 2009, the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University introduced... more In 2009, the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University introduced a new course, MEC325: Introduction to Engineering Design, intended to address various perceived shortcomings in the Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering undergraduate programs. The authors realized that there is very little literature on how human factors can be embedded ubiquitously in engineering design processes. As a result, MEC325 has become anchored on the concept of "human-centric engineering design." This paper will describe the course's initial state and summarize many of the efforts taken by the authors to tightly integrate engineering design and human factors, and to provide a valuable learning experience to both mechanical and industrial engineering undergraduate students.
The authors describe their experiences creating a cornerstone engineering design course for mecha... more The authors describe their experiences creating a cornerstone engineering design course for mechanical and industrial engineering undergraduate students. Starting with a tabula rasa, we have been working to create a one-semester design experience that integrates Human Factors (HF) directly into every aspect of engineering design. In the last decade, we have identified three key issues with which we grapple: lack of integration of HF in design; lack of access to cohesive HF data; and dysfunctional student teams. Given the lack of available information upon which to draw for the design of this course, we adopted a CQI-like iterative, organic, and evolutionary approach. In this paper, we present many of the ways we have attempted to address these issues, relating to courseware development, course management, assessment and grading, and student and instructor support. We summarize by presenting our advice to others who are looking to fully embed HF or other non-design fields into a coge...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2019
In the cornerstone engineering design course for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering undergradu... more In the cornerstone engineering design course for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering undergraduates at Ryerson University, students’ design approaches were being negatively affected by gender and other biases. Therefore, the course was modified to encourage students to explore these biases, with an initial emphasis on gender so that they may design with a fuller sense of women’s issues. This novel endeavour aimed to change the course’s culture via awareness, and by connecting equity, diversity, and inclusion to an engineering context. Qualitative analysis of student reports before and after these modifications showed that the intervention led to user groups that more closely matched actual demographics and included a higher number of women, LGBTQ, and elderly Personas than before. Furthermore, the qualitative descriptions showed less of a skewed tendency to attribute positive characteristics to men and negative characteristics to women after the course modifications were implement...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association, 2017
This paper presents a method and tool to achieve a trade-off between workload on assessors of sem... more This paper presents a method and tool to achieve a trade-off between workload on assessors of semester-long team-based design projects in large classes, with the need for fair and comprehensive assessmentsof each student individually. Students “book time” throughout the semester, recording their level of input into each project element. They each provide totals for time spent on each element of their final reports. The instructor assesses each design report as if one person wrote it. These data are combined into a single rubric/ spreadsheet. The rubric scales report assessments to accommodate differences in team size, and generates a unique grade for each student in a team. Examples are given in the paper, as are details from the implementation of the method in a Fall 2015 introductory design course. There is anecdotal evidence that the method works, but there is always room for improvement. Several ideas for future modifications to method are discussed. All spreadsheets, documentat...
Bioinspired, Biomimetic and Nanobiomaterials, 2016
This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of developing standards for biomimetic mate... more This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of developing standards for biomimetic materials, based on the authors’ experience with International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/Technical Committee 266 ‘Biomimetics’. With the expansion of global trade, international standards are increasingly called on to protect the interests of consumers, improve business productivity and facilitate trade. In the past, standards typically addressed form/fit/function specifications and were associated with mature industries. Some ISO standards are beginning to focus on processes, quality and consistency, which can support advances in emerging fields such as biomimetics. ISO has the potential to advance biomimetic materials and biomimetics in general by developing and promoting frameworks that reflect the evolving nature of biomimetics. Rather than standardizing the output of biomimetics, ISO/TC 266 could explore systemic challenges and identify initiatives to overcome them, such as...
Engineering with Computers, 1994
Currently available programmin 9 and database systems are insufficient for engineerin 9 applicati... more Currently available programmin 9 and database systems are insufficient for engineerin 9 applications. The authors contend that a logical progression from a formal conceptual model of the engineering domain to a computational model will lead to new programming paradigms capable of directly supporting engineering applications in a rigorous, concise manner. A formal domain model devised by the authors, the Hybrid Model (HM) of design information, is briefly introduced. It is an extension of axiomatic set theory and is discussed in detail elsewhere. HM forms the basis of Designer, a prototype-based object-oriented programming language supporting a signature-based canonical message-passin 9 mechanism and multiple inheritance. Designer is implemented using the Scheme programming language. Because Designer satisfies a formal conceptual model, and because it is based on a formally specified language, its robustness and logical validity are superior to those of other languages not founded on formal principles. Designer combines concepts of functional and object-oriented programming to provide the formal rigor and flexibility to capture the complex and strongly interrelated information that designers use. Examples demonstrate how Designer represents design information. The results of the authors' research indicate that Designer can capture design information (including aspects of functional requirements and design intent) effectively and efficiently.
Understanding Design Concept Identification
Design Computing and Cognition '12, 2014
... xx-yy. © Springer 2012 1 Understanding Design Concept Identification Ivey Chiu, Filippo A. Sa... more ... xx-yy. © Springer 2012 1 Understanding Design Concept Identification Ivey Chiu, Filippo A. Salustri Ryerson University, Canada ... Further examination shows that Participants 1 and 2 appear to exhibit lan-guage patterns similar to each other, both in POS and LIWC patterns. ...
Background, Motivation and Goals The potential for tapping nature's storehouse of solutions, solu... more Background, Motivation and Goals The potential for tapping nature's storehouse of solutions, solution pathways and systems' principles has captured the world's imagination, especially after the publication of Benyus' Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997). A growing number of proponents have been using biomimicry, biomimetics and biologically inspired design (B 3 D for short, pronounced "B-cubed-D") in diverse contexts and employing a wide range of approaches. The language and cultural issues that challenge effective communication in the practice of B 3 D among experts in the biological and technological domains are well known. There are also communication issues within the B 3 D community itself, exemplified by the proliferation of terms used to describe what we do: biomimicry, biomimetics, bioinspiration, biologically inspired design, biologically inspired engineering, bionics, biognosis, bioreplication, biomorphosis, and so on. B 3 D is intended to represent the common elements underlying these diverse terms.
The Canadian design engineering network (CDEN/RCCI): sharing engineering design educational tools within thirty three schools of engineering in Canada
ABSTRACT this document itself follows the structure defined herein, and so this document can be u... more ABSTRACT this document itself follows the structure defined herein, and so this document can be used as an example by module authors
e-Research Collaboration, 2010
Wiki technology has been successfully used for collaboration in various settings. Wikis are, howe... more Wiki technology has been successfully used for collaboration in various settings. Wikis are, however, rarely used in design engineering research. The authors' research involved studying how design research occurs and how wikis can be used to support it. The authors observed, and report on, several instances of design research where wikis were used. We find that successful application of wikis depends on the software exhibiting certain characteristics. Some of these characteristics include: both WYSIWYG and "raw" editing modes, the ability to edit page elements without editing the entire page, and the ability to comment on or annotate content. To validate these findings, we are developing a new wiki, the intended user community of which are design researchers. While that development is still ongoing, we report early findings here.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association, 2011
The conceptual design process is one of the most important and confusing in engineering design. T... more The conceptual design process is one of the most important and confusing in engineering design. The Integrated Design Exploration and Analysis (IDEA) process was created to help improve conceptual design practices in the industry. An analysis of existing methods was conducted in order to identify weaknesses. The IDEA process, along with a supporting software interface, was developed to rectify these weaknesses. The interface was written in the open source program Compendium. Three multi-disciplinary case studies were conducted to validate the process. The use of IDEA led to more and higher quality design concepts.
Misfits, Balance, Requirements, and Systems: thoughts on Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Page 1. Misfits, Balance, Requirements, and Systems: thoughts on Alexander's Notes on the Sy... more Page 1. Misfits, Balance, Requirements, and Systems: thoughts on Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form Filippo A. Salustri, Ryerson University, Canada, salustri@ryerson.ca Abstract The author examines the notion of ...
Département de génie de la construction École de technologie supériere
This paper discusses some preliminary results of the author's on-going research into the rep... more This paper discusses some preliminary results of the author's on-going research into the representation of product function information for integrated knowledge-based environments. Behavior is defined as what a product does, and function is defined as how the behavior is achieved. Predicative descriptions (of either function or behavior) are described in terms of verb-object pairs (VOPs). A VOP may represent either a function or a behavior, depending on the context in which the VOP appears. A discussion of the implementation of this representation in the author's DKSL knowledge-based system is also given. 1 Introduction The principal thrust of the author's research is to construct an integrated knowledge-based system (KBS) that can be used universally throughout an arbitrary engineering design process. In order to provide for much-needed logical rigor, the development of the KBS is rooted in a formal logical theory of design also under development by the author. The u...
The instructors of the undergraduate cornerstone design course in Mechanical and Industrial Engin... more The instructors of the undergraduate cornerstone design course in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University aim to integrate diversity and inclusion into students’ design education. Our goal is to provide resources that students can use to understand human capabilities and limitations, so their designs are better suited to a wide range of users. The project was broken down in four phases: Phase 1 consisted of scoping deliverables and background research; Phase 2 included courseware development; Phase 3 employed the courseware into the Fall 2019 offering of our cornerstone design course; and Phase 4 reviewed and analysed student’s work to determine the efficacy of the courseware.To initiate this effort, we focused on three Human Factors: vision, hearing, and strength. We created a process whereby students could assess these Factors quantitatively for specific interactions and use the assessments to justify specific functional requirements and constraints of their ow...
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Papers by Filippo Salustri