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Design is the foremost step in the development of any electro-mechanical product. One limitation of existing design tools is that they only focus either on the initial design phase such as customer needs gathering, or on the later phases such as design embodiment or detailed design phase. As a result, there are very few existing computational tools to aid the designers at the conceptual design stage. The proposed research seeks to eliminate this drawback by providing a computerised conceptual design framework that incorporates Modularity, design for assembly (DFA) and design for variety (DFV) principles. Conceptual design alternatives obtained from the proposed research framework are ranked based on minimum assembly time, and are composed of modules in such a way that future changes in customer needs are satisfied only by replacing certain modules. This paper provides a detailed discussion of the proposed framework obtained by amalgamating Modularity, DFA, and DFV. Working of the framework is also demonstrated with the help of an electronic toothbrush design example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The C–K theory is a recent theory of reasoning in design. Despite many practical applications, the theory has not yet been operationalized in the form of a computational design tool. In this paper, we argue that, in order to build such tools, a third space—an environment space E—must be introduced to the theory. Therefore, we extend the C–K design theory, using ideas and principles from situated cognition. As we discuss, the new version provides a theoretical background for building personal design assistants—creative and adaptive design tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]