Environment interaction model-driven smart products through-life design framework

With the advent of Industry 4.0, design of a smart product to work in a smart factory, or at home or city over its lifecycle has to consider its intelligent interaction with its external environment (physical, human and cyberspace environments). Thus, environment interaction-driven design of smart products becomes an important design research field, facing a huge challenge of integrating a smart product and its environment interaction design crossing all its life phases. In this paper, a high-profile design framework is proposed for guiding environment interaction model-driven smart products through-life design. It has three core elements: (1) a generic environment interaction model of a smart product through-life phases, which can help map out the interaction requirements between the smart product and other interaction elements through-life phases, (2) a smart product design process model for guiding product and its interaction design at each phase and (3) a design strategy of smart products through-life design. Its implementation feasibility is demonstrated with an industrial case study, showing that it is helpful to implement design solutions to a smart product for satisfying intelligent interactions with its external environments through-life phases.