2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Human-centered engineering design processes and methods are continually evolving. New technologies such as advances in multi-physics simulation capability and enhancements to additive manufacturing capabilities have created significant alterations in the design process. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to create similar new capabilities in the design process. AI has proven to sometimes be a tremendous asset, sometimes be a detriment and occasionally be misused. This research takes design methods used in an engineering design process called Design Innovation (DI) and reports on efforts to incorporate AI-based tools to enhance DI methods. Design methods such as Stakeholder Engagement, Journey Mapping, Functional Decomposition, Design by Analogy, C-Sketch Ideation, Mind Mapping, CAD and design change data management are addressed. A variety of AI-based tools are explored including LLMs (Chat GPT, copilot, perplexity, etc.), image generators such as Dall-E and AI-based video generators. In addition to attempting to use current AI tools enhance the design methods, we also developed some in-house AI-oriented capabilities for use in some of the design methods. This included developing an AI to assist in design change processes. This development was done using JADE (Java Agent Development Network) and WEKA (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis) to program a Multi-Agent System. We report on which AI tools worked well, and which did not, for the different DI Methods. Details on how to use a given AI tool for particular DI methods, including prompt engineering, and the resulting output for the DI methods, are provided. As a majority of the DI methods experienced at least marginal enhancement from the use of the AI tools, the results of this study should prove helpful to those wishing to explore AI use for human-centered design processes.