Designing complex, interactive, architectural systems with CIAS-DM: A model-based, human-centered, design & analysis methodology

Abstract

The built environment increasingly contributes to improving human health, well-being, and performance in measurable, predictable, and tailorable ways. Achieving high-performance environmental systems requires real-time-interactive sensing, monitoring, actuation, and communication subsystems, as well as real-time interactions of these environmental systems with their users and other internal and external systems. Developing theories, constructs, methods, and tools necessary for designing such high-performance, complex, interactive systems is an active area of research.

This dissertation focused on methods and tools for representing the cognitive and physical affordances of complex, interactive, architectural systems (CIAS). The Complex, Interactive, Architectural Systems Design Methodology (CIAS-DM) was proposed as a method and tool for helping designers uncover and document the scope of proposed CIAS. CIAS-DM was evaluated qualitatively. This project used the design of a `smart' mattress in a patient room `smart' bed/mattress/over-the-bed table ecosystem as the basis for a series of design cases. Fourteen clinicians participated as subject matter experts. Four research associates participated as raters. The results of evaluating CIAS-DM indicate that CIAS-DM is useful for scoping CIAS design challenges. The contributions of this dissertation are: 1) identifying and characterizing CIAS; 2) introducing the systems modeling language (SysML) and a cognitive work analysis (CWA) representational and analytic methods into architecture; 2) mapping constructs and methods from CWA into SysML; and 3) providing these methods and tools in an integrated package appropriate for those designing CIAS.