ABSTRACT
The introduction of user-centered systems engineering (SE) methodology and design principles to design smarter products has been inspired by the theory of smart environments developed in Germany (Bullinger and Scheer 2003; DeJong and Vermeulen 2003; Scheer and Spath 2004). Intelligent and integrated systems have affected industrial and economic growth in many nations. These developments have strengthened the need for emphasizing the role of information and knowledge in smart systems. A revolution sparked by smart systems with its new information society is taking over what has been known as the industrial society (Hauknes 1996). Smart systems design considers qualitative attributes between human-human and human-machine interactions. These considerations include workforce integration (i.e., those who design the system and provide the service) and customers or users (i.e., those who receive and use the product or service). Smart systems design also describes the necessary objects and/or components that constitute intelligent design. During the design process, a designer selects a group of objects and attributes from the design continuum, and assigns a value to each attribute that best fits the objectives and constraints specified by the owner (Kaner and Kami 2007). The resulting smart systems concept is a qualitative and quantitative description of a system in terms of integrated objects representing functionally effective components.
