A protocol for modeling and tracking engineering design process through structural complexity metrics applied against communication networks

Abstract

A protocol for tracking the interconnection of design communication elements as a mixed temporal hypergraph network which evolves in real time is presented here. The protocol uses email and limited human reporting data to develop the time-stamped connections of the network. At any time, this network, or a filtered subset, may be subjected to an analysis of graph and network complexity properties. The response of these properties may then be correlated to either events, such as design stages, or performance metrics, such as designer effort. This approach is applied to emails generated in the course of an undergraduate mechanical engineering senior design project demonstrating an ability to identify member roles, work schedules, and project phase changes from the network properties.