SEMINAR: Product Design in the Face of Complexity and Sustainability Challenges

Abstract:

Successful and sustainable product design relies on a combination of strong technical, managerial, and market performance. This is particularly challenging when the design context is complex, such as where there are multi-stakeholder interests, sustainability considerations (environmental, social, and economic), or multidisciplinary engineering analyses. To produce truly optimal solutions, designers must understand these factors and how they influence product success, which requires a suite of modeling and simulation tools from multiple academic fields, including different engineering specialties, psychology, economics, and public policy. This talk will discuss ongoing research in the areas of design for market systems and multidisciplinary design optimization. New methods and approaches are explored through analyses of automobile safety and fuel efficiency, consumer electronics and appliance efficiency, and multidisciplinary aircraft performance.

Bio:

Steven Hoffenson directs the Design of Sustainable Products Across Complex Environments (Design SPACE) laboratory as an Assistant Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research and teaching focus on how people design products, how they could design better products, and how designers can more effectively integrate external, multi-disciplinary, and multi-stakeholder considerations into design practice. Dr. Hoffenson holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Stevens, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in the Department of Product and Production Development, and then he served as a Congressional Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).