Collaboration in design optimization
Author(s)
Lin, Eunice, M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
DownloadFull printable version (1.298Mb)
Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Advisor
Maria Yang.
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Tacit is a software tool for designing and solving 2D truss structures. The Tacit web application expands these features to allow users to design truss structures with integrated analysis and optimization tools. Tacit was intended for single user inter- action, but much of engineering and design work is team-based and collaborative. To examine the effects of collaboration on design optimization problems, it is crucial for users to be able to easily share and view the structure designs of their teammate. This thesis presents a new version of Tacit with these collaboration features along with a new method for assessing the similarity of pairs of structures created by collaborators, and the results and analysis of a user study conducted where participants collaborated on design optimization problems with these new functionalities. Results showed that collaboration and the collaborative software tools were both effective in improving performance. The new software functionalities improved the efficiency of collaboration but unintentionally reduced the amount of physical collaboration.
Description
Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017. This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (page 83).
Date issued
2017Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer SciencePublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.