A Computational Simulation-Based Framework for Estimating Potential Product Impact During Product Design

Abstract: The impact of engineered products is a topic of concern in society. Product impact may fall under the categories of economic, environmental, or social impact, with the last category defined as the effect of a product on day-to-day life of people. Design teams lack sufficient tools to predict the social impact of products, and the combined impacts of economic, environmental, and social impacts for the products they are designing. In this paper we present a framework for the prediction of product impact during product design. To predict product impact, models of both the product and society are required. This framework integrates models of the product, scenario, society, and impact into an agent-based model to predict product impact. Although this paper demonstrates the framework using only social impact, the framework can also be applied to economic or environmental impacts individually or all three concurrently. Agent-based modeling has been used previously for product adoption models, but it has not been extended to predict product impact. Having tools for impact prediction allows for optimizing the product design parameters to increase potential positive impact and reduce potential negative impact.

Published in Design Science

Agent-Based Model visualization of population infected with a virus

We are working to extend current modeling practices on the adoption of products in society to look at predicting the social, environmental, and economic impacts of products. That is a big task, so right now the research is focused on how we can predict the social impact of products. We take models for society, the product, and impacts and integrate them in an agent-based model. Then we iterate on the modeled product to investigate how changes to the product affect the predicted impact.