Overview
Dr Aurisicchio's research interests are in the field of engineering design.
Engineering safety-critical systems
His work has investigated the development and operation of complex systems. In particular, he has researched and developed methods for design rationale capture, functional modelling, requirement rationale capture and information retrieval. His contributions in this area have led to the development of tools to support engineering designers such as the Rolls-Royce Decision Rationale editor (DRed) and the design-Visual-Understanding-Environment (designVUE).
To pursue the ambition to develop new intelligent tools for engineering designers he has researched AI algorithms for quantitative argumentation. These algorithms are being applied to engineering design problems through the computational tools developed in his group.
User experience and human-computer interaction
Product design research also constitutes an area of great interest to him. He is currently undertaking novel research to understand pleasant experiences resulting from human-product interaction focusing on emotional responses. His research in this area aims to inform the development of new processes and tools to support product designers.
CURRENT RESEARCH TOPICS
- Engineering design
- Complex system design
- Knowledge management in product development
- Design rationale capture and computer-support tools
- Design thinking and question asking in engineering design
- Problem understanding
- Requirement analysis and requirement rationale capture
- Functional modelling and functional analysis
- Industrial evaluation of design methods
- Computational argumentation and quantitative reasoning
- User experience, emotional design and positive emotions
RESEARCH STUDENTS
Anouk Zeeuw van der Laan (completed) - Head of Circular Economy at Common Seas
Nuraini Duad, Design for motive fulfilment
Xi Yang, Digital user experience (completed) - Product Designer at Microsoft
Fadzli Bin Bahrudin, Material experience (completed) - Assistant Professor at International Islamic University Malaysia
Antonio Rago, Argumentation and decision rationale (completed) - Research Associate at Imperial College
Leo Hsu, Reconfigurable manufacturing for building systems (completed) - Research Associate at Imperial College
Tanawan Wee, Modular design for building systems (completed) - Research Associate at UNCTAD
Marco Morrone, HiLumi Large Hadron Collider beam screen design (completed) - Staff member at CERN
Juan Carlos Ortiz Nicolas, Understanding and designing pleasant experiences with products (completed) - Associated Professor at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Weili Dai, Supporting requirement analysis through requirement rationale capture and traceability (completed) - Senior Frontend Developer at ebay
Tom Harrison, Understanding the fuzzy front end of design
INVITED LECTURES
Design Knowledge Capture, lecture delivered to Human Systems Integration Division, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Fielfd, CA, USA, May 2014.
Supporting Conceptual Design of Complex Engineered Systems, lecture delivered to Office of the Chief Technologist, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, CA, USA, May 2014.
Lightweight Rationale Modelling for Systems Engineering, lecture delivered to PARC, A Xerox Company, Palo Alto, CA, USA, August 2013.
Decision Rationale Capture, lecture delivered to Systems Engineering division, Intelligent Systems division and Mission Design division, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Fielfd, CA, USA, August 2013.
RESEARCH IMPACT
Dr Aurisicchio has researched, developed and led application in industry of two software tools known as the Rolls-Royce Decision Rationale editor (DRed) and the design Visual Understanding Environment (designVUE).
Rolls-Royce now regularly applies design rationale capture to main engine development programmes and more than 1000 of their engineers have been trained in these methods. For example, in the Rolls-Royce Future Programmes department the DRed tool for design rationale capture is almost universally used. In addition, in the Rolls-Royce Engineering Services department the practice of root cause analysis has shifted from traditional tools to DRed radically improving shared understanding of the current state of investigations. Marco has delivered DRed training to approximately 350 Rolls-Royce graduate engineers enrolled in the training programme.
The designVUE tool has received more than 1500 downloads. High profile downloads incldue: Siemens, SPAWAR Systems Centre, NASA, Solar Turbines and Nacco Materials Handling. Marco has delivered designVUE training to line engineers at Solar Turbines.
COLLABORATORS
- Professor Peter Childs, Imperial College, Department of Mechanical Engineering
- Professor Peter Desmet, Delft Univesity of Technology, Industrial Design Engineering
- Dr Becky Hooey, NASA Ames Research Center, Human Systems Integration Division
- Professor Francesca Toni, Imperial College, Department of Computing
- Professor Pietro Baroni, Brescia University, Departmento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Dr Nathaniel Dahan, Design of Orthopaedic surgery SErvices (DOSE)