Giving customers what they want is an essential factor for success in business, but knowing what they want is not an easy problem to solve.  Customers do not always want the same thing; they may not even have a clear idea of what they want.  With current business to customer (B2C) mass customization tools and technology, high levels of customization are possible, however, as psychologist Barry Schwartz has pointed out, too much choice can be overwhelming.  Schwartz calls this phenomenon the paradox of choice.

Author: Michal Piasecki
Author: Sean Hanna

Publication: Design Computing Cognition Conference Proceedings 2010

Year: 2010

The ability of evolutionary algorithms and related search techniques to explore a varied space of solutions with efficiency and often surprising innovation makes them useful tools for design. This typically requires the explicit definition of a goal or objective function and so has been ideally suited to engineering optimisation tasks. For many design problems however, and particularly for those of great complexity, it is difficult to specify such a goal in advance. Design and creativity themselves, particularly in a social context, are often seen as processes of guided, but open exploration. Steels has shown that effective languages can be generated without an external measure of quality by allowing robots to speak and evaluate each other in an environment. Such approaches have been incorporated into genetic algorithms by allowing the objective to change over time.

Author: Sean Hanna

Publication:Proceedings of GECCO '07: Genetic And Evolutionary Computation Conference | full text (PDF)

Year: 2007

Structural optimisation in this case refers to the branch of engineering in which a physical structure is optimised with respect to certain performance criteria. Finite element methods are one technique to facilitate structural optimisation whilst also allowing visualisations and acting, generally, as a good design tool.

Author: Sean Hanna
Author: Siavash Haroun Mahdavi

Publication: Gero, JS (ed) Design Computing and Cognition '06. Springer. pp 563-582 | (full text) PDF

Year: 2006

In this paper, we introduce a technique by which the internal material properties of an object can be optimised at a microstructural level (5x10-5m) to counteract the forces that are applied to it. These can then be fabricated using the rapid prototyping method of stereolithography. The proposed technique is analogous to principles of mass customization and takes advantage of a flexible module to create complex structures in a manner that is computationally efficient and effective.

Author: Sean Hanna
Author: Mahdavi S. Haroun
Author:Mahdavi S. Haroun

Publication: Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture and the 2004 conference of the AIA Technology in Architectural Practice Knowledge Community | full text (PDF)

Year: 2004

Optimisation techniques are used by engineers to design structures to satisfy many criteria, such as high strength or low weight. Recent advances in computer controlled manufacturing technology have also allowed the construction of such structures to be automated, so that the machine plays a significant role in both design and building processes. The work in this paper investigates optimisation of a microstructure suited to a rapid prototyping technology known as stereo lithography that is capable of construction at a high resolution, currently around 0.05mm. Our technique is based on the seamless repetition of a tiny structural module over a large volume such that the overall object behaves as a continuous material. It is, in effect, operating at a scale between traditional large-scale manufacturing and nanotechnology.

Author: Sean Hanna
Author: Madhavi S. Haroun

Publication: Proceedings of SCIS & ISIS 2004. The Joint 2nd International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems and 5th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligent Systems | full text (PDF)

Year: 2004