SUMMARY

Thanks to computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, novice engineering designers can engage in product design and production more easily, increasing opportunities for innovation. Despite this increase in computer support, beginning designers still make improper design decisions which unnecessarily increase the manufacturing costs and fabrication failures that lead to higher environmental impacts. Manufacturers can provide feedback to beginning designers to assist them change design decisions but often not because of knowledge gap and time consideration. Therefore, some design for manufacturing (DFM) software have been developed to provide feedback. However, these software are not designed for beginning designers. Beginning designers and DFM experts are different in cognition, knowledge level and communication experiences which cause the current approaches cannot assist novices to decrease the environmental impacts. Therefore, this research aims to discover what feedback content should be provided to beginning designers, and strategies to communicate the content. This research proposes to provide new feedback content including DFM guidelines and design suggestions to assist beginning designers to change design decisions using automated software. Feedback content and strategies that can decrease the environmental impacts of CAM technologies will be tested using prototype software.