The design process used to produce an innovative computer system is presented.The computer system that resulted from the process uses a circular motif both for the user interface and the input device.The input device is a dial and the user interface is visually organized around the concept of a circle.The design process itself proceeded in the presence of a great many constraints and we discuss these constraints and how an innovative design was achieved in spite of the constraints.

The Wearable Computer Project is a testbed integratingresearch on rapid design and prototyping. Based onrepresentative examples from six generations of wearablecomputers, the paper focuses on the differences in rapidprototyping using custom design versus off-the-shelfcomponents. The attributes characterizing these two designstyles are defined and illustrated by experimentalmeasurements. The off-the-shelf approach required ten timesthe overhead, 30% more cost, fifty times the storage resources,20% more effort, five times more power, but 30% less effort toport software than the embedded approach.

The paper describes the evolution of an Interdisciplinary Concurrent Design Methodology (ICDM) and the metrics used to compare four generations of wearable computer artifacts produced by the methodology at each stage of ICDM's growth.The product cycle is defined, its phases, and the design information representation for each phase.Six generic axes of design activity are defined, and the concept of benchmarking a complete design methodology using these axes is introduced.In addition an approach for measuring design complexity is proposed.When applied to the four generations of the CMU wearable computers, the ICDM has demonstrated two orders of magnitude increase in design and efficiency. A. Conceptual Product.During the conceptualization stage, the multidisciplinary design team establishes a common vision of the end product.This vision provides a consistent set of design goals for all disciplines to maintain