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It's a Complete Haystack: Understanding Dependency Management Needs in Computer-Aided Design

delete2025-11-01
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PRE
AI
K
Kathy Cheng *
S
Shurui Zhou
A
Alison Olechowski
DOI:10.1145/3757617delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
In today's landscape, hardware development teams face increasing demands for better quality products, greater innovation, and shorter manufacturing lead times. Despite the need for more efficient and effective processes, hardware designers continue to struggle with a lack of awareness of design changes and other collaborators' actions, a persistent issue in decades of CSCW research. One significant and unaddressed challenge is understanding and managing dependencies between 3D CAD (computer-aided design) models, especially when products can contain thousands of interconnected components. In this two-phase formative study, we explore designers' pain points of CAD dependency management through a thematic analysis of 100 online forum discussions and semi-structured interviews with 10 designers. We identify nine key challenges related to the traceability, navigation, and consistency of CAD dependencies, that harm the effective coordination of hardware development teams. To address these challenges, we propose design goals and necessary features to enhance hardware designers' awareness and management of dependencies, ultimately with the goal of improving collaborative workflows.
Keywords:
awareness
collaboration
hardware development
distributed work

Journal

P
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACM ON HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
IF:
0
Papers:
392
Citations:
0

Organization

U
university of toronto
Scholars:
14.7W
Papers: 12.0W
Citations: 165