Towards failure-based decision-making during design: user-centered design meets design methods research

The function failure design method was introduced to enable failure-based decision-making during the early stages of conceptual design. In ongoing work, design researchers are validating this design method on NASA mission design data. To facilitate the adoption of this method by practicing design engineers, a user-centered design approach is applied to the development of the design method tools. This paper describes the multi-disciplinary approach used in this development effort which brings together user-centered design and design methodology research. The preliminary findings include descriptions of user work practice that should be supported by the decision-support tools. The goal of this work is to develop user interface prototype technologies to the level where they can be deployed in usability studies.