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Abstract: Despite the abundance of supporting tools and methods engineers have at their disposal nowadays, the early stages of design processes are still not extensively supported. Strikingly, the whole of design aids is characterized by mono-disciplinarity, scattered availability and the fact that the majority aims to support the later design stages. We believe that the next step in design engineering is to support the early design stages with a method that integrates the available aids and allows stakeholders to experience the consequences of the design decisions they make. This can be done by composing Synthetic Environments (SE). In companies, Synthetic Environments will be used as dedicated work environments that support specific product design activities. By simulating the in-context behaviour of products that do not yet exist they support the performance of selected design activities. Representation of different product life-cycle scenarios in Mixed Reality situations will help human actors perceive the product behaviour sufficiently realistic to perform real-world design tasks (e.g. brainstorming, concept assessment, end-user evaluation) on a virtual product. We aim to demonstrate how and under which circumstances companies will be able to benefit from SE in the near future. In close cooperation with three industrial partners (Indes, Thales and PANalytical), we define a method for identifying plausible application situations in a product evolution trajectory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Computational synthesis (CS) researches the automatic generation of solutions to design problems. The aim is to shorten design times and present the user with multiple design solutions. However, initializing a new CS process has not received much attention in literature. With this motivation, this paper presents a framework to structure and model routine design to assist the development of new CS processes. First, concepts are presented and used to propose a structure for artifactual routine design problems. Latter, base models (building blocks) for creating new designs are described. Finally, a classification of design families according to its structure and models is presented together with its relation to know CS methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: What-if design attempts to support the designer by addressing design problems, both in his own field of expertise, as well as from adjoining domains. To this end, What-if design research focuses on the development of methods and tools for real-time, in-process, design support in order to enhance the search for optimal solutions. The main advantage of this way of designer support is that the design can be evaluated continuously on numerous fields of expertise, enabling the optimization of the search for design solutions. This paper focuses on a bottom-up approach for What-if design and describes examples that illustrate the working methods chosen. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]