In today's aggressive global market, innovation is key for success and design solutions require not only to achieve competitive edge, but also to address the growing environmental, social, and economic needs of the community at large. Consideration of these three pillars of sustainability makes a design inclusive, and life cycle thinking is found to be a promising approach across the literature. However, most supports for design address certain facets or aid singular tasks, and the use of design methods and tools, which have the potential to significantly improve the design process, is low due to inappropriate use and selection of these methods. InDeaTe (Innovation Design database and Template) is a holistic, knowledge-driven, computer-based tool for design of sustainable systems, such as products, manufacturing systems andservice systems and has been developed to address and integrate the aspects of sustainability on a singular design platform. It comprises of the generic design process Template that imbibes life cycle thinking into the process by incorporating consideration of every life cycle phase in each design stage, where design activities are performed iteratively. It further supports the design process by aiding the use and selection of appropriate design methods and tools in concurrence with the primary motivation of improving sustainability of the system with the aid of the InDeaTe Design Database. This paper discusses the ontological underpinnings behind the conceptualization of the InDeaTe methodology and the development of the supporting tool. The paper further reports empirical findings from six different case studies conducted for evaluating the effectiveness of InDeaTe tool in supporting design for sustainability (DfS). The results show that InDeaTe tool has potential in supporting DfS.

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评估 InDeaTe 工具在支持可持续性设计方面的有效性

在当今竞争激烈的全球市场中，创新是成功的关键，设计解决方案不仅需要实现竞争优势，还需要满足整个社区日益增长的环境、社会和经济需求。考虑可持续性的这三个支柱使设计具有包容性，并且发现生命周期思维是整个文献中一种很有前途的方法。然而，大多数对设计的支持都针对某些方面或辅助单一任务，并且由于对这些方法的不恰当使用和选择，对有可能显着改进设计过程的设计方法和工具的使用率很低。InDeaTe（创新设计数据库和模板）是一个整体的、知识驱动的、基于计算机的可持续系统设计工具，例如产品、制造系统和服务系统，并已开发用于在单一设计平台上解决和整合可持续性方面的问题。它由通用设计流程模板组成，该模板通过在每个设计阶段对每个生命周期阶段的考虑，将生命周期思维吸收到流程中，其中设计活动是迭代执行的。它通过帮助使用和选择适当的设计方法和工具来进一步支持设计过程，同时在 InDeaTe 设计数据库的帮助下提高系统可持续性的主要动机。本文讨论了 InDeaTe 方法的概念化和支持工具的开发背后的本体论基础。本文进一步报告了六个不同案例研究的实证结果，这些案例研究旨在评估 InDeaTe 工具在支持可持续性设计 (DfS) 方面的有效性。结果表明，InDeaTe 工具具有支持 DfS 的潜力。