5 Smarter Products User - Centered Systems Engineering

The introduction of user-centered systems engineering (SE) methodology and design principles to design smarter products has been inspired by the theory of smart environments developed in Germany (Bullinger and Scheer 2003; De Jong and Vermeulen 2003; Scheer and Spath 2004). Intelligent and integrated systems have affected industrial and economic growth in many nations. These developments have strengthened the need for emphasizing the role of information and knowledge in smart systems. A revolution sparked by smart systems with its new information society is taking over what has been known as the industrial society (Hauknes 1996). Smart systems design considers qualitative attributes between human–human and human–machine interactions. These considerations include workforce integration (i.e., those who design the system and provide the service) and customers or users (i.e., those who receive and use the product or service). Smart systems design also describes the necessary objects and/or components that constitute intelligent design. During the design process, a designer selects a group of objects and attributes from the design continuum, and assigns a value to each attribute that best fits the objectives and constraints specified by the owner (Kaner and Karni 2007). The resulting smart systems concept is a qualitative and quantitative description of a system in terms of integrated objects representing functionally effective components. User-centered smart systems (USS) design is characterized by the relationship between knowledge and technology. USS involves the knowledge that is required to deliver the smart product, whether it is invested in the technology of the product or in the service provider (Hulshoff et al. 1998; McDermott, Kang, and Walsh 2001). Knowledge requirements in intelligent systems design and modeling have been arranged into three main categories: knowledge based, knowledge embedded, and knowledge separated (McDermott, Kang, and Walsh 2001). Research has indicated that a knowledge-based smart system, such as teaching aid systems, depends on customer knowledge to deliver intended functionality. This knowledge may become embedded in a product, which makes the service accessible to more people. An example of this is logistics providers, where the CONTENTS