Amaresh Chakrabarti

DRM, a Design Research Methodology

Design research is a fast-growing field of inquiry with significant importance in terms of helping society to create products and processes of improved quality and for enhancing the environment in which we live. The step-wise, hands-on approach of DRM studies the ways in which design research can best be undertaken to address specific questions. This study gives rise, for the first time, to a generic and systematic design research methodology intended to improve the quality of design research its academic credibility, industrial significance and societal contribution by enabling more thorough, efficient and effective procedures. Professors Blessing and Chakrabarti provide a comprehensive list of types of design research linked to appropriate research methods familiar as well as new and supported by illustrative examples throughout the text. Furthermore, the book points the way to more detailed sources of various established research methods that can be applied. The practical emphasis of the text is reinforced by a whole section of design research project examples contributed by eminent design researchers and placed in the context of the proposed methodology to demonstrate the application of the variety of approaches available in a structured fashion. DRM, a Design Research Methodology, speaks to a broad readership: it will provide the graduate student with an excellent grounding in good design research practice, inculcating good habits of research for the future and showing how the process of understanding and improving design can become more effective and efficient; it will interest the academic and industrial researcher as a source of useful and well-ordered methods within a common design research ethos, as well as a methodological framework for research projects and programmes; it will attract the supervisors of young researchers by offering research methods and a well-thought-out and logically structured research process for use in courses on design research.

A functional representation for aiding biomimetic and artificial inspiration of new ideas

Inspiration is useful for exploration and discovery of new solution spaces. Systems in natural and artificial worlds and their functionality are seen as rich sources of inspiration for idea generation. However, unlike in the artificial domain where existing systems are often used for inspiration, those from the natural domain are rarely used in a systematic way for this purpose. Analogy is long regarded as a powerful means for inspiring novel idea generation. One aim of the work reported here is to initiate similar work in the area of systematic biomimetics for product development, so that inspiration from both natural and artificial worlds can be used systematically to help develop novel, analogical ideas for solving design problems. A generic model for representing causality of natural and artificial systems has been developed, and used to structure information in a database of systems from both the domains. These are implemented in a piece of software for automated analogical search of relevant ideas from the databases to solve a given problem. Preliminary experiments at validating the software indicate substantial potential for the approach.

Towards an ‘ideal’ approach for concept generation

Abstract Conceptual design should contain two kinds of steps: divergent in which alternative concepts are generated, and convergent in which these are evaluated and selected. The aim of conceptual design is to develop promising concepts. This requires generating a wide range of concepts (to prevent overlooking valuable concepts), and evaluating/selecting these soon enough (to restrict their number from getting too large to allow meaningful consideration). Existing concept generation approaches are suggested to be used only after concept sketches are available. This raises a question—what should the ‘ideal’ approach be before concept sketches are developed? This paper proposes such an approach.

A scheme for functional reasoning in conceptual design

Abstract An ideal functional reasoning environment should support designs of any nature, routine or innovative, at any level of detail, as well as through varying levels of detail. In this paper, three existing functional reasoning models are reviewed in this perspective. It has been found that none of these models support all of these requirements. It has been shown that a functional reasoning approach cannot guarantee the generation of solution concepts, which are combinations of known solutions, unless guided by the knowledge of existing solutions. A new model which can support design both across a level of detail and down through levels of detail has been proposed, which, using a divide and rule approach and using recursive problem redefinition while incorporating existing solutions, could support conceptual design. It is also shown that, although the generation of completely new solutions is not supported by the model, the model, when aided by a framework allowing a sustained progress of its knowledge base by transfer of knowledge from existing designs in the form of basic structures and rules of combination, could support generation of designs which otherwise would be considered unsupportable in a systematic way (innovative).

An approach to functional synthesis of mechanical design Concepts: Theory, applications, and emerging research issues

Conceptual design is an early stage in the design process that involves the generation of solution concepts to satisfy the functional requirements of a design problem. Usually, there are many solutions to a design problem; therefore, there is scope for producing improved designs if one could explore a solution space larger than is presently possible. An approach would be to use the computer to synthesize a wide variety of concepts for a given problem, and allow designers to explore these before developing the most promising ones. Adopting a research approach based on developing basic representations, knowledge base, and reasoning procedures adequate for synthesizing concepts of existing devices and mechanisms, a computer program for synthesis of solutions to a class of mechanical design problems has been developed. For a given design problem, the program can produce an exhaustive set of solution concepts, in terms of their topological and spatial configurations, which can then be explored by designers. The program has been tested in two ways: (1) by comparing the candidate solutions produced by the program with those produced by designers in two real design case studies, and (2) by using three experienced designers to evaluate the solutions, generated by the program, for their novelty and usefulness. This paper presents the theoretical basis, research method, the theory and implementation of the synthesis approach. Also, the results of the above case studies and evaluations, and a discussion of further issues highlighted by the evaluations are presented.

Computer-Based Design Synthesis Research: An Overview

One of the hallmarks of engineering design is the design synthesis phase where the creativity of the designer most prominently comes into play as solutions are generated to meet underlying needs. Over the past decades, methodologies for generating concepts and design solutions have matured to the point that computation-based synthesis provides a means to explore a wider variety of solutions and take over more tedious design tasks. This paper reviews advances in function-based, grammar-based, and analogy-based synthesis approaches and their contributions to computational design synthesis research in the last decade.

An Approach to Functional Synthesis of Solutions in Mechanical Conceptual Design. Part I: Introduction and Knowledge Representation

Conceptual design is an early phase in the design process, which involves the generation of solution concepts to satisfy the functional requirements of a design problem. There can be more than one solution to a problem; this means that there is scope for producing improved designs if one could explore a solution space larger than is possible at present. Computer support to conceptual design could be effective to this end, if an adequate understanding of the required design knowledge and subsequent tools for its representation and manipulation were available.This three-part series of articles describes one approach to synthesis of solutions to a class of mechanical design problems; these involve transmission and transformation of mechanical forces and motion, and can be described by a set of inputs and outputs. The approach involves(1) identifying a set of primary functional elements and rules of combining them, and(2) developing appropriate representations and reasoning procedures for synthesising solution concepts using these elements and their combination rules; these synthesis procedures can produce an exhaustive set of solution concepts, in terms of their topological as well as spatial configurations, to a given design problem.Part I provides an overview of the scope and the approach, adopted in the entire series, to identify the design knowledge required for synthesis, and a method for its validation. It specifically focuses on the extraction and representation of this knowledge. Part II describes synthesis of topological (graph structure) descriptions of possible solutions to a given problem. Part III describes a procedure for producing spatial configurations of these solutions.

A methodology for supporting “transfer” in biomimetic design

Abstract Biomimetics involves transfer from one or more biological examples to a technical system. This study addresses four questions. What are the essential steps in a biomimetic process? What is transferred? How can the transferred knowledge be structured in a way useful for biologists and engineers? Which guidelines can be given to support transfer in biomimetic design processes? In order to identify the essential steps involved in carrying out biomimetics, several procedures found in the literature were summarized, and four essential steps that are common across these procedures were identified. For identification of mechanisms for transfer, 20 biomimetic examples were collected and modeled according to a model of causality called the SAPPhIRE model. These examples were then analyzed for identifying the underlying similarity between each biological and corresponding analogue technical system. Based on the SAPPhIRE model, four levels of abstraction at which transfer takes place were identified. Taking into account similarity, the biomimetic examples were assigned to the appropriate levels of abstraction of transfer. Based on the essential steps and the levels of transfer, guidelines for supporting transfer in biomimetic design were proposed and evaluated using design experiments. The 20 biological and analogue technical systems that were analyzed were similar in the physical effects used and at the most abstract levels of description of their functionality, but they were the least similar at the lowest levels of abstraction: the parts involved. Transfer most often was carried out at the physical effect level of abstraction. Compared to a generic set of guidelines based on the literature, the proposed guidelines improved design performance by about 60%. Further, the SAPPhIRE model turned out to be a useful representation for modeling complex biological systems and their functionality. Databases of biological systems, which are structured using the SAPPhIRE model, have the potential to aid biomimetic concept generation.

Investigating novelty–outcome relationships in engineering design

Abstract Design creativity involves developing novel and useful solutions to design problems. The research in this article is an attempt to understand how novelty of a design resulting from a design process is related to the kind of outcomes, described here as constructs, involved in the design process. A model of causality, the SAPPhIRE model, is used as the basis of the analysis. The analysis is based on previous research that shows that designing involves development and exploration of the seven basic constructs of the SAPPhIRE model that constitute the causal connection between the various levels of abstraction at which a design can be described. The constructs are state change, action, parts, phenomenon, input, organs, and effect. The following two questions are asked. Is there a relationship between novelty and the constructs? If there is a relationship, what is the degree of this relationship? A hypothesis is developed to answer the questions: an increase in the number and variety of ideas explored while designing should enhance the variety of concept space, leading to an increase in the novelty of the concept space. Eight existing observational studies of designing sessions are used to empirically validate the hypothesis. Each designing session involves an individual designer, experienced or novice, solving a design problem by producing concepts and following a think-aloud protocol. The results indicate dependence of novelty of concept space on variety of concept space and dependence of variety of concept space on variety of idea space, thereby validating the hypothesis. The results also reveal a strong correlation between novelty and the constructs; correlation value decreases as the abstraction level of the constructs reduces, signifying the importance of using constructs at higher abstraction levels for enhancing novelty.

Special Issue: Representing functionality in design

, As designs exist to satisfy some purpose or function, knowledge of functionality is essential in a wide variety of designrelated activities, including generation and modification of designs, comparison, evaluation and selection of designs, and explanation, diagnosis or repair of designs. Functional modelling refers to a wide variety of approaches to model a design and its requirements from its functional aspects so as to allow reasoning about its functionality for various activities such as the above. Function has been historically interpreted in a wide variety of ways: for instance, as an abstraction of the intended behavior of a design, an indexing of its intended behavior, the relationship between a design and its environment, the external behavior of a design, or its internal behavior. Functional reasoning as a design approach has been around for at least 25 years now (Koller, Rodenacker, and Roth in Germany, French in the United Kingdom, Freeman and Newell in the United States, Hubka in Switzerland, and Yoshikawa in Japan are but a few examples of the early researchers in this area), and have attempted to support design in the conceptual stage by methods and approaches to describe function, to establish function structures (e.g., by using generally valid functions), to satisfy these subfunctions and combine them into concept alternatives (e.g., by using catalogues of physical effects and working principles), and to evaluate these (e.g., by using morphological matrices). However, the emphasis was largely prescriptive, and computer supports passive in nature. The advent of computers and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques provided a renewed focus on reasoning about functions, extending the area into diagnosis and explanation, and allowed computers to take a more active role in the design process, especially in its generative aspects. A formal representation of functionality is essential for supporting any of th€se activities on computers. Tradition-