Viewpoints in co-design: a field study in concurrent engineering
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We present a field study aimed at analysing the use of viewpoints in co-design meetings. A viewpoint is a representation characterised by a certain combination of constraints. Three types of viewpoints are distinguished: prescribed viewpoint, discipline-specific viewpoint and integrated viewpoint. The contribution of our work consists in characterising the viewpoints of various stakeholders involved in co-design (design office disciplines, and production and maintenance disciplines), the dynamics of viewpoints confrontation and the cooperative modes that enable these different viewpoints to be integrated.Keywords:
Viewpoints
Representation
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Viewpoints
Architectural Geometry
Architecture framework
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Strategic design
Design knowledge
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In the world of designing, three fields of attention can be recognised, namely design research, design practice, and design education. Gaps exist between these three fields. In this thesis about designing, the focus is on the gap between design research and design practice. Design practice includes many design disciplines and an increasing number of multidisciplinary teams. Main problems in design practice are the communication between designers with a different background and the integration and co-ordination of important aspects during a design process. By tackling these problems, the effectiveness and efficiency of design processes in practice can be improved. The study of similarities and differences between design processes in several design disciplines and the development of support for reflection on design processes are topics that can improve design practice and that deserve more attention in design research. The goal of my research is to decrease the gap between design research and design practice in order to improve design processes. Reflection on design processes can help designers to improve their design process, its results, and the designer’s proficiency: By reflecting explicitly on the current design situation and on the performed design activities, in a systematic way and on a regular basis, designers can plan next design activities that can be performed effectively and efficiently given the design goal at that moment. In this thesis, the combination of systematic and regular reflection is called structured reflection. To improve design processes in various design disciplines in practice, the study of similarities and differences between design processes in several disciplines can be useful. Similarities between design processes are the basis for domain-independent design knowledge (as distinguished from domain-specific design knowledge). To reach the goal of my research, I have chosen to combine, in a broad explorative study, the development of support for structured reflection on design processes and the development of domain-independent design knowledge. This thesis describes a domain-independent approach to improve design processes through structured reflection. My research process can be summarised as follows. I studied three design disciplines, namely architecture, mechanical engineering, and software engineering. To get input from design practice, I did qualitative empirical research: I performed twelve case studies in the three disciplines to inventory characteristics of design processes and I compared the cases for similarities and differences. The similarities, together with the results of a literature study, have been the basis for the development of domain-independent descriptive design knowledge. The developed descriptive knowledge, in turn, formed the basis for developing domain-independent prescriptive design knowledge. At the end of the project, I confronted all results with design practice to get feedback on the results in another empirical study and I performed a literature study to position the results in the design literature. My design philosophy and design frame are the descriptive results developed to answer the first research question, namely “How to describe design processes in a domain-independent way?”. My design philosophy is a set of domain-independent concepts and terms for describing a design process. The concepts and terms are based on an application of the general theory of state-transition systems to the context of designing; the concepts of state and state transition correspond to the main concepts of design situation and design activity in my design philosophy. The answer to the first research question given by the design philosophy is refined in a design frame: The design frame offers a means to structure the description of a design process in a domain-independent way. Major structuring concepts of the design frame are dimensions and subjects. I define three dimensions, namely level, perspective, and time. These dimensions define a three-dimensional space, called a positioning space, in which important aspects of design processes can be positioned. A positioning space must be defined for each subject, being the three parts of a design situation: the product being designed, the design process, and the design context. My design frame is a domain-independent structure formed by the combination of the three dimensions for each subject. My design method is the prescriptive result developed to answer the second research question, namely “How to support structured reflection on design processes in a domain-independent way?”. My design method is a domain-independent aid that offers designers support for reflecting on design processes in a structured way. Reflection on design processes is defined as an introspective contemplation on the designer’s perception of the design situation and on the remembered design activities. A reflection process is described as a process that consists of three steps that are called preparation, image forming, and conclusion drawing. The design method is based on two main concepts: The first concept is the systematic description and analysis of design situations and design activities by means of forms and checklists; only systematic support for the preparation step of a reflection process is developed. The second concept is the idea of design sessions, introduced to stimulate designers to reflect regularly during a design process. A design session is defined as a period of time during which one or more designers are working on a subtask of a certain design task, for example, one afternoon, a whole day, or a week. Both concepts are combined to support structured reflection on design processes. The complete design method consists of five steps for each design session, namely planning a design session, defining the subtask of the design session, reflecting at the beginning of a design session, designing during the core of a design session, and reflecting at the end of a design session. A prototype software tool, called ECHO, has been developed to explore the benefits of using a software system to facilitate the use of the design method. Together, the design philosophy and the design frame offer concepts, a vocabulary, and a structure to describe design processes in a domain-independent way. The design method is a first proposal of a method that supports structured reflection on design processes. My results are thus possible answers to the mentioned research questions and are starting points to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of design processes. Based on the feedback I collected, I am optimistic about the applicability of my results in design practice. By asking input from design practice and by developing results that are useful for design practice and that contribute to design research, I contribute to decrease the gap between design research and design practice. The most important recommendations for further research are to test all results extensively in design practice and to investigate how to apply the results in design education.
Reflection
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Abstract Industrial design processes can be described as human design problem solving, incorporating the acquisition, evaluation, production and transfer of specific knowledge. In this paper, we will describe the connection and interaction between visualization and reasoning during different stages of the design process. Thereby we focus on three early stages of this process: clarifying the task, concepting and designing an overall solution. This paper provides a rather general description of design processes and more detailed remarks on design knowledge and design actions. It specifically focuses on design concepts as visual key elements in industrial design processes. We will address the importance of externalization and visualization as means for thinking and knowledge generation and transfer in industrial design in general. The design process is described as an interplay of the parallel and iterative developments of three domains: knowledge, concept and design. In contrast to linear schemes, this paper proposes a design process scheme focusing on iterative circles and parallel processing possibilities. Industrial design knowledge will be described and compared to relevant knowledge in other disciplines, in particular, engineering design knowledge. We will describe the strong link between the designer's individual biographies, design knowledge and the outcome of design processes. Design concepts will be discussed as extremely compact representations of core characteristics of the artifacts to be designed, serving as a guide to the design process. Design actions as described in this paper are characterized by the simultaneous occurrence of thought and externalization processes. Different kinds of visualization are discussed in regard of their role in reasoning during industrial design processes. This paper concludes by sketching two perspectives. One addresses the need for interdisciplinary research on new visualization tools with regard to human reasoning in design processes. The second one gives an impression of how visualization tools and methods of industrial design can supplement other disciplines.
Externalization
Design knowledge
Industrial design
Design process
Process design
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The paper presents results of a study about design concept development in transportation design. The main question of this study concerns mainly the existence and development of design concepts and its status in the design process furthermore it partially describes its content, manifestation and function.
From the view of industrial psychology, the design concept is one of the most important stages in the design process, because its availability determines the success, regarding the design object. A design concept can be understood as the first solid and focused unit of knowledge in design processes with ill-defined problems. In the Design Process Planning, based on Action Regulation Theory, design concepts act as a compact guiding principle, including the anticipation of the artefact. Using this as a scientific basis a long term study with 25 students including cross section and longitudinal aspects were held from 2005 to 2008.
Three concept types derived from the literature preceded the investigation, whereby the holistic experience-oriented one after Uhlmann (2006a) forms the beginning. This focus was confirmed within the investigation for the majority of the projects, yet one must assume that, functional (construction-oriented) or formal concepts successfully finds to application. Holistic concepts enable a more comprehensive and more balanced treatment within the design process.
Within the work two general methods of generating design concepts: extracting and compiling were defined. Following the typical processes they can be assigned to different fields: transportation design (extracting) and industrial design (compiling). Furthermore three designer types and an open category could be identified. The three types “automobile”, “design” and “story” can be clearly and consistently assigned by the students.
The research closes with a recommendation of a hybrid design concept processing using aspects of the two generating methods as well as instruments of different designer types.
Keywords:
Design Concept, Transportation Design, Field study, Early stages
Anticipation (artificial intelligence)
Design process
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Drawing on cases of teamwork in architectural modeling, this paper reports a study in rich and informative approaches to participatory design. Two features of participation and coordination among designers are observed: (1) for technical necessities, members of a design team work in individual design worlds calling upon heterogeneous conceptual structures and instruments; and (2) for critical judgements, the emergence of final unity in design products as a whole is of common concern shared by all participants, which is dynamically related to the developments of design solutions in individual domains. By abstracting generic patterns of cooperative modeling from the cases discussed, several concepts of communication in participatory design are explored. It is found that a view of situating modeling acts in coupled modeling spaces can lead to a useful exposition of participatory design in terms of the interrelations between common images and distributed design developments. As guiding pointers to further research, the current study identifies two distinct generic patterns of communication in participatory design.
Participatory Design
Exposition (narrative)
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Philosophy of design concerns concept and language,while the design methodology concerns design process.We focus on the nature of design as the key to understanding design process.This paper commences by reviewing definitions of design and designing,and viewpoints of Simon on artificial science.The reminder of the paper investigates design in terms of the science classification of Aristotle.The main points concluded are:(1)design can be classified into productive science;(2)design has triple nature because it encompasses three type of science,natural science,productive science and practical science;(3)the core of design is mapping function and structure as accurate as possible.A macro framework of design is proposed to focus design thinking on new explanation to map function and structure.
Viewpoints
Design Science
Macro
Design science research
Strategic design
Designtheory
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Viewpoints
Architectural pattern
Blueprint
Executable
Software architecture description
Architecture description language
Domain-specific language
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To integrate all viewpoints effectively,this paper discussed an integrated manner of viewpoints based on development relation,and proposed an integrated process of viewpoints based on 2-aray increasement.In addition,the process of integration was modeled using the category theory.It could help to further research all kinds of basic properties of viewpoints' integration in a general way.
Viewpoints
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Viewpoints
Situational ethics
Method engineering
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