A Comparative Programme for Design Research
Martin Stacey
Computer and Information Sciences, De Montfort University
Claudia Eckert
Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge
Christopher Earl
Design and Innovation, The Open University
Louis L. Bucciarelli
School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
P. John Clarkson
Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge
Proceedings of the
Design Research Society 2002 International Conference: Common Ground
Brunel University, London, September 2002
As ‘designing’ is a diverse phenomenon, but design processes have many
important features in common with some other design processes, we can gain
insights into how and why designers do what they do by making cross-domain
comparisons. In this paper we propose a research programme for design
studies: systematising these insights by using comparisons between design
processes to compile a catalogue of patterns of designing – sets of features of
design processes linked by causal mechanisms, that in combination with each
other give a wide range of design processes their distinctive forms. The
catalogue of patterns should include patterns describing features at different
levels, linked by different sorts of causal mechanisms, so that different
theoretical views and scales of description should be integrated in a richer
unified understanding of designing.
Design research: mapping a diverse phenomenon
Designing is a diverse, extremely complex and enormously variable phenomenon, so diverse
that it is not obvious whether it makes any sense to regard ‘it’ as one thing, distinguished from
non-designing by more than superficial characteristics. What scope do universal theories of
design really have? Perhaps the crucial determinants of the nature of design are neither
universal nor peculiar to individual episodes, but are shared by types of designing. What types
of designing? And what are the crucial determinants of the nature of design?
We have no definitive answers to these questions to offer. What we propose in this paper is a
research programme for developing a richer and broader understanding of designing, by
examining and mapping the similarities and differences between design processes. The goal of
this research programme is to develop a progressively more coherent body of theoretical
understanding of design, by working upwards from individual case studies.
A Comparative Programme for Design Research
This includes both comparisons between apparently-similar processes within one industry and
between apparently-dissimilar processes producing radically different products, for instance
helicopters and sweaters. We find similarity and difference relationships that cut across
conventional industry boundaries – understanding them gives insights that are beyond the
scope of universal theories of design and unreachable through single-industry process models.
While design is the focus of our interest, our local and incremental approach to developing
theoretical understanding of complex human activities means that we are not fundamentally
concerned with the boundaries between design and non-design; our project can and should
encompass the similarities and differences between types of designing and other complex
human activities such as the practice of science. In contrast top-down universal theory
approaches to design necessarily make the difference between design and non-design a central
issue (see Love, 2002); this may be a fundamental mistake.
Design as a function of technology and culture
The nature of an artefact – both its physical structure and operating principles, and its intended
purposes (see Kroes, 2002) – exerts a powerful causal influence on the process through which
it is designed. And design processes are constrained by human cognitive capabilities; although
some designers have exceptional abilities, the findings of cognitive psychology give us
universal constraints on what is possible for designers. Between these poles, a variety of
cultural factors influence how designing happens: At the social level, the business models of
the companies involved in the process (see for instance Eckert and Demaid, 2001), and their
structures and social organisation. At the individual level, the knowledge, skills and values
participants get from their professional training and experiences. Only some of these factors
are unique; important elements are shared by the members of particular groups (see
Bucciarelli, 1994; Henderson, 1999). Among the very wide range of factors that influence
what happens in a design process, some serve to increase diversity, others serve to increase
uniformity.
This richness creates a methodological problem for design research: the sheer scale and
complexity of comprehensive descriptions or explanatory theories of how complex artefacts
are designed. Design researchers are forced to focus on limited subsets of the phenomena in
front of them (for an illustration of this, see the twenty analyses of the same data reported in
Cross, Christiaans and Dorst, 1996). Even rich case studies of individual processes or working
environments are necessarily partial; ethnographers deal with this by adopting as a
methodological axiom the view that different ethnographic accounts of the same culture can be
equally valid. Universal theories of designing focus only on some aspects of a few significant
parts of the design creation process. And descriptions of design differ radically in the scale of
the phenomena they describe, as well as in the coverage they claim and the theoretical and
methodological assumptions they embody. For instance Smithers (1998) presented a theory of
the types of knowledge designers use; Papamichael and Protzen (1993) and Gero and
Kannengiesser’s (2002) offered theories of the types and sequences of description creation in
design; many engineering methodologists have based their views of designing on the theory of
technical systems, for instance Andreasen’s (1980) theory of domains. Many other researchers
have presented views of design to highlight particular aspects of designing, for instance Taylor
(1993) stressed the inherent complexity and parallel nature of designing; we (Eckert, Stacey
and Clarkson, 2000) highlighted the role of sources of inspiration in idea generation.
2
M.K. Stacey, C.M. Eckert, C.F. Earl, L.L. Bucciarelli & P.J. Clarkson
In order to make comparisons between design processes, we need to reduce the complexity of
the problem by focusing on a limited subset of the phenomenon of design, as well as a limited
set of design processes. Thus the research we do and the results we produce will necessarily be
piecemeal, but they should be cumulative. In order to integrate our findings both with other
comparative studies and the insights generated by the wide range of approaches to the study to
design, we need a way to formulate our results that facilitates combination, both to create
richer composite analyses and to reveal conflicts. In the rest of this paper we discuss our
experiences of transferring insights between design processes, and the meta-theoretical view
our experiences suggest, of how to do this systematically to build a structured mosaic of
theoretical understanding of design.
Comparative analysis: useful in practice
This papers draws on empirical studies undertaken by the authors in a variety of different
domains and industries. The first author undertook a broad and detailed study of design in the
knitwear industry, focusing on communication (Eckert, 1997, 2001; Eckert and Stacey, 2000)
and the role of inspiration (Eckert and Stacey, 2001), interviewing and observing over 80
designers and technicians in 25 companies in Britain, Germany and Italy (see Stacey and
Eckert, 1999 for a methodological discussion of our approach). The broad range of companies
studied make it possible to compare patterns of activities across both similar and dissimilar
companies, to assess the causes of observed behaviour. In the knitwear industry everyone
followed the same steps, so that the design process as described in a detailed flowchart model
(Eckert, 1997) proved remarkably universal; however there were very large differences
between companies in the effort put into the different stages and the amount of backtracking to
earlier stages. Eckert and Demaid (2001) compared design processes in a variety of industries
characterised by needing to meet very rigid delivery deadlines. They identified consistent
patterns across industries determined by the business models of the companies. How they sold
their products had a huge effect on patterns of communication in the design process as well as
on risk taking. Some companies design their own ranges and sell them through shows. They
do market research, but have no direct interaction with the buyers who make purchasing
decisions for retailers. They are free in their design, but take a high risk. At the other extreme
some companies work very closely with buyers for retailers, who give them briefs for designs
and guarantee the purchase of a certain number of designs. These companies communicate
with their buyers, but have no direct contact with the market. They undertake a large amount
of rework to satisfy their buyers, but carry little risk until the relationship with their buyer
become tenuous.
More recently the first author has been studying the design of complex engineering products,
focusing on change processes in helicopters (Eckert, Clarkson and Zanker, in press) and diesel
engines; and on process planning and communication in the automotive industry (Eckert and
Clarkson, 2002; Eckert, Clarkson and Stacey, 2001), interviewing between 12 and 25
engineers and engineering managers in each company. She has gained interesting insights into
engineering processes from her understanding of knitwear design. A stark example is the
similarity in communication behaviour between artistic knitwear designers and technical
knitwear technicians, and conceptual designers and analytical designers of diesel engines.
Knitwear designers’ greatest skill lies in gaining a tacit understanding of the space of
contemporary fashion and placing their own designs within this context (Eckert and Stacey,
2001). They communicate their ideas highly efficiently amongst themselves by specifying
changes to known examples of designs that are interpreted within the shared context of
contemporary fashion (Eckert and Stacey, 2000). Arguing with verbal explanations referring
3
A Comparative Programme for Design Research
to rational criteria from within a tacit context represented largely in visuospatial terms is
extremely difficult; therefore the strength of subjective belief often replaces rational
arguments. This mode of communication does not work well with people who do not share the
context; it often appears handwavy (quite literally) and unspecific. The designers come across
as inarticulate and less knowledgeable then they really are. Several years after observing the
discourse of knitwear designers, we studied change processes in diesel engines, and
interviewed several designers who were involved in the conceptual design of a new fourcylinder engine. The head designer had to make fundamental design decisions weighing up
trade-offs, and defining the fundamental design that would later be realised and tested in
several thousand person-years of design effort. This individual has a tremendous tacit
knowledge of the properties of diesel engine designs. He uses the company’s old engines as
well as competitor engines both as inspiration – for reassurance rather than copying – and as
communication aids. When he has different design options, he might decide to follow a similar
path to his competitors trusting them to have gone through a careful analysis process.
Although design decisions are backed up with analysis, he follows his subjective instincts. In a
discussion of degree titles it emerged that the diesel engine conceptual designers often don’t
have a degree and if so feel strongly that they should be bachelors of art rather then science,
because they see themselves as artists. They describe their work as an art rather than an exact
science. Their mannerisms are remarkably similar to the knitwear designers including the
gestures they make and the subjective beliefs with which they argue. In consequence their
more analytical colleagues experienced them as vague and found it difficult to question their
design decisions. When the author pointed out the similarity to knitwear design and explained
the difficulty of rational explanation in communication about objects with emergent spatial or
behavioural properties, designers from both groups found this very enlightening and requested
that this issue be included in a formal feedback presentation. The conceptual designers had
never realised that their way of talking was perceived as unscientific and therefore had not
provided the rational arguments that they could have constructed; and the analytical engineers
had never realised that this way of talking resulted from the task the conceptual designers were
doing rather than their personalities (the two are of course not unconnected).
So we have found that cross-process comparisons, focusing on a few locally-relevant aspects
of designing, have enabled us to identify and explicate important causal influences on what
happens in design processes. However what we have not yet done is formulate the results of
such comparisons in a form that facilitates the development of a systematic body of
understanding about design.
Similarity between instances of designing
Our understanding of the diverse range of human activities we label ‘designing’ is influenced
by the similarities we perceive both between pairs of design activities and across large
categories. Similarity between domains arises from common features of designs or processes.
Different categories of features correspond to a spectrum of layers of design descriptions
(Eckert and Earl, 2002). At one end of this spectrum lie the designers’ domain knowledge and
the organisation of the process whilst at the other end lie the details of components and the
production processes that produce them. In a central layer, the features of products, which
include solution principles, function and layout, link 'upwards' to the knowledge and process
layers and 'down' to production and component layers. Common features between domains
can be examined in each of the layers separately. However, in identifying similarities between
domains it will be necessary to look across layers. Just as common features (and distinguishing
features) can be used to compare domains, so can common relationships between features.
4
M.K. Stacey, C.M. Eckert, C.F. Earl, L.L. Bucciarelli & P.J. Clarkson
Not all shared features will have the same significance, either in our perceptions or in
theoretically grounded reasoning. Moreover distinguishing features may overwhelm the
similarity due to shared features. One purpose of the research programme we propose here is
to change people’s perceptions of similarities and differences by raising awareness of factors
other than superficial product characteristics and conventional divisions between industries.
People commonly perceive ‘design’ as having a unity beyond being the activity of creating a
plan for an artefact to meet a practical need; and many commentators have argued that it is
fundamentally characterised by a cycle of proposing a partial solution, evaluating the solution,
reformulating the problem and proposing another solution to the revised problem (Asimow,
1962; see Cross, 2000). But we suspect that much of the perceived unity comes from design
activities sharing many characteristics with some others; in order to make sense of the
relationships between individual processes and the range of design activities, we need to
consider other kinds of similarity relationships.
Most intuitively, similarity classes can be defined where all elements in the class share a set of
common features. In mathematical analyses of similarity, closures arising when no more
elements can be added to a class without reducing the numbers of features they all share are
the critical similarity classes. These similarity classes are related in a lattice structure (Ganter
& Wille, 1999) which provides a 'map' of potential similarity relationships. Similarity can also
be based on tolerance relations defined by shared features. Tolerance classes are maximal sets
of mutually similar elements, that is each pair of elements shares at least one feature
(Schreider, 1975; Zadeh, 1971). This tolerance similarity is not transitive so that if domain A
is similar to B which is in turn similar to C then A may not be similar to C. Similarity classes
themselves are the subject of a tolerance relation based on sharing a common domain. A
weaker definition of similarity classes relaxes the condition for common features to exist
between each pair of domains in a class, allowing a chain of connection. Two domains A and
C can be similar through a domain B which shares features with A and (not necessarily the
same features) with C. A stronger specification takes into account the number of shared
features. An m-connection arises from m shared features and corresponding similarity requires
that domains share at least m features. Classes defined by chains of m-connections correspond
to the multidimensional structures of complex systems (Johnson, 1995).
In measuring the strength of similarity is necessary to consider both shared and distinguishing
features as well as their significance (Tversky, 1977). The 'diagnostic' or classificatory value
of features is dependent on the domains being compared. The strength of similarity between
domains can reinforce itself in this classificatory role. Similarity is then perceived as greater
within the group. The significance of features is also dependent on the range of domains being
compared. Features common to all domains in a range have little or no significance.
However, adding more domains, which do not share these common features, can increase the
significance of the original features.
Patterns of designing
The characteristics that some instances of designing share with some others come in clusters –
different instances of designing can have a lot in common because what they share includes
powerful determinants of the form of the designing process. Clusters of consistently shared
characteristics form patterns. If we observe such a cluster, we can hypothesise that the shared
characteristics are linked by causal relationships, or are all symptoms of some as yet
unrecognised underlying cause. We can test such a hypothesis in two ways: by looking at
5
A Comparative Programme for Design Research
other design processes to see if the presence of some of these attributes predicts the presence
of other attributes; and by trying to construct and test theories of how the attributes are
causally related.
In our view, recognising and making sense of patterns of designing is crucial to developing a
rich, multi-level understanding of design. [Note that we avoid the term design pattern; this
refers to an abstractly-formulated solution to a recurring problem, together with a description
of the type of problem it fits and the consequences of using it, an idea introduced into
architecture by Christopher Alexander (Alexander et al., 1977) and widely adopted in software
engineering (notably, Gamma et al., 1995). This notion has long been implicit in much
engineering practice.]
Patterns of designing can be detected at all the scales at which designing can be analysed and
described – of time, number of participants, the portion of the whole artefact being considered,
and the activities that are the units of analysis. Moreover, given sufficiently rich observations
of design processes we can look for patterns comprising features at different levels of
description. But identifying similarities that can be represented as patterns of designing is not
trivial: it involves finding the right abstractions of observable phenomena; this requires
imagination and reframing the design situations in different conceptual terms.
Causal stories: elements of theories of designing
Even if the elements of a group of characteristics appear to be consistently present or
consistently absent in a range of design processes, the group will be unpersuasive as a pattern
of designing until we have a causal explanation for why these features are related. Thus the
next step given a putative pattern is hypothesising one or more plausible causal stories for how
the features share common causes, or are linked by a chain of cause and effect. The instances
of designing under study can then be scrutinised for supporting or disconfirming evidence.
Hypothesising causal relationships enables the generation of more focused questions about
what is really going on in an episode of designing.
But the processes of designing complex artefacts are immensely complex and variable, and the
causal mechanisms that influence the form of designing may operate with different strength.
Causal influences on some aspect of designing may collide, chains of causality may be
blocked or modified by other influences. So we should ordinarily formulate our causal stories
in terms of causal pressures rather than rigid determination. We may observe only part of a
previously defined pattern in another design process, so that some characteristic of the process
is predicted by the pattern but is absent. We should look for reasons why the causal
mechanisms that according to the pattern should produce it are blocked, as well as for
evidence that they are not operating. Either finding should enable us to refine our formulation
of the pattern or suggest a new one.
We retain an open mind on the question of whether a science of design is possible, or whether
the study of design is necessarily a humanistic discipline (see Darke, 1979, for an articulation
of this view). But the collection of patterns of designing has the form of scientific research –
what we are after is understanding regularities and causal processes, by hypothesising and
testing covering laws relating observable variables in the form of clusters of characteristics of
design processes, and partial theories in the form of causal stories for why the elements of the
pattern are related. Such covering laws and pieces of causal explanation formulated as patterns
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M.K. Stacey, C.M. Eckert, C.F. Earl, L.L. Bucciarelli & P.J. Clarkson
of designing are local and fragmentary – pieces of a fuller theory subsuming all valid universal
theories and accurate process models, that it may be impossible ever to complete.
A research programme in comparative design studies
Because designing any complex artefact involves an extremely complex process, and design
processes are influenced by a wide variety of phenomena at several levels, complete causal
explanations of why everything happens and the way it happens are infeasible. But design
processes are neither completely dissimilar from each other nor completely unpredictable. We
can aim to develop an understanding of design that explains the nature and effect of major
causal influences on design processes; and that predicts to a useful degree the form of design
activities and the problems they will meet. The immensity of the task of developing a
complete theory should not worry us, provided that our theory fragments not only function as
free-standing explanations of interesting phenomena, but can also be combined to understand
what happens when different interesting phenomena occur together.
We propose that cataloguing patterns of designing should be a significant part of future
empirical design research. Researchers should take opportunities to use previously
documented patterns to gain insight into new design processes. At the same time they should
take opportunities to test, corroborate, falsify and refine previously documented patterns as
well as add new ones. In each case they should explicitly raise the question of how general are
the phenomena they see in individual cases. Through an incremental process of critical
evaluation by a diverse body of researchers – everyone who wishes to participate – we can
incrementally develop a progressively greater understanding of similarities and differences
between design situations, and the causal influences that give design processes their form.
The view of design processes as varying in similarity to each other along different dimensions,
and the research programme we outline here, is independent of the theoretical assumptions and
foundations that underlie any particular approach to understanding what is going on in design.
The comparative programme should encompass and orient a variety of different theoretical
and methodological approaches to design studies. It should provide a basis for examining the
scope of particular analyses and their relationships to similar analyses of other design
processes; and for relating different theoretical perspectives on the same phenomena.
We welcome the participation of researchers with different concerns and theoretical
viewpoints. Patterns of causal influence can spring from technical, organisational, social and
cognitive causes, and can act at many different scales, and a key part of the programme we
propose is looking to see how different patterns describing different types of phenomena
interact. Researchers tend to interpret phenomena that they see on one specific layer and
attribute problems to the cause they are most familiar with. Sociologists tend to attribute
problems to the interpersonal nature of design, psychologists to cognitive factors, business
researchers to organisational processes. For instance Eckert (2001) described a variety of
causes for breakdowns in the communication of design ideas between commercial knitwear
designers and knitting machine technicians (and argued that the primary causes were the
inherent difficulties of describing knitted structures in the available representations and the
participants’ lack of understanding of the nature of their communication problems, while
several secondary causes made resolving the problems harder). The two groups are socially as
different as possible: young university trained women versus older men trained on the job with
little formal education. Sociologist repeatedly commented that only when they heard this fact,
they understood why the two groups don’t communicate. However we have also observed
7
A Comparative Programme for Design Research
communication difficulties between socially homogeneous engineers with different areas of
expertise and mental representations – what Bucciarelli (1994) termed different object worlds
(Eckert, Clarkson and Zanker, in press). Comparative studies that allow us to test causal
hypotheses should enable us to assess the validity of different explanations.
Comparative analysis through observational studies
While theoretical analyses and experimental studies of designing in more or less realistic
scenarios can yield important insights, particularly into the cognitive processes involved in
particular kinds of problem solving, the primary source of information in the comparative
design research programme will be studies of actual commercial design processes through
interviews and observations.
Sociology offers many different methodological approaches for studying cultures.
Ethnography (see for instance Agar, 1980; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995) has been widely
adopted as a way to understand work cultures to assess the real requirements for software
systems (for instance Suchman, 1987; Viller and Sommerville, 2000; see Anderson, 1994;
Button, 2000), and has been taken up by many design researchers (notably Bucciarelli, 1988,
1994) including ourselves (Eckert, 1997, 2001). Ethnographic methodology can be applied to
developing analyses of design in terms of cognitive analyses of expertise (Ball and Ormerod,
2000) and knowledge-level analyses of the information used and transmitted by the
participants in a design process (Stacey and Eckert, 1999), as well as sociologically-oriented
analyses of the types of statement that members of design teams make to each other
(Minneman, 1991) and the role of visual representations in structuring design processes
(Henderson, 1999).
In an ethnographic study the researchers joins in the daily life of the groups they are studying
and attempt to learn the skills and perspectives of the actors, while remaining conscious of
their role as an outsider. This dual perspective enables the ethnographer to make sense of how
the participants in the culture themselves see what they do and why they do it. Ethnographic
studies are traditionally very detailed studies of one culture, which do not make any claims to
generality. The criterion for validity is that assertions ring true to the participants in the
culture; some researchers have attempted formal validation exercises with their participants,
this is not unproblematic (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). However the rich data and
insights gained by ethnographers can allow us to interpret behaviour we see in other situations.
For example Anderson (1994) pointed up the analogy between Levi-Strauss’s (1969) study of
marriage and gift-giving among Amazonian Indians and the social processes involved in
experts helping their less knowledgeable colleagues customise software (Mackay, 1990).
While some ethnographers argue that researchers should enter a culture without prior
hypotheses, in practice hypothetico-deductive reasoning and explicit hypothesis testing is an
important part of ethnographic fieldwork (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995); we have argued
that this is an essential part of understanding how cultural factors and the nature of the artefact
interact to determine the form of the design process (Stacey and Eckert, 1999). Comparisons
between design domains can provide a rich source of hypotheses to test and refine in
observational studies; their use should be enhanced by making testable hypotheses available in
a systematic catalogue of patterns of designing.
In most of our own empirical studies of engineering, applying ethnographic methods is
infeasible; we are largely reliant on interviews (Eckert, 2002). The information gathered is less
rich, and suffers if the interviews are away from the engineers’ normal workplaces. Nor can
8
M.K. Stacey, C.M. Eckert, C.F. Earl, L.L. Bucciarelli & P.J. Clarkson
we always take statements in interviews at face value, as ethnographers well know. However
we find interview studies to be effective given appropriately selected informants, especially if
assertions can be discussed with several people with different viewpoints. We are able to
actively test hypotheses derived from cross-industry comparisons. We employ aspects of the
ethnographic mindset: we recognise the importance of understanding the participants’ own
perceptions of tasks, situations and cultures; and that interpretations are selective and partial,
so that different accounts may be equally valid. However central to our approach is generating
and testing more general and abstract causal processes, and using comparisons between
situations to test hypotheses and rival explanations.
The return journey: practical applications of comparative design
studies
Our approach is pragmatic. It aims to provide useful insights into particular situations from the
richness of the immense variety of other design processes. While we are intellectually
interested in understanding the nature of design, our ultimate goal is to find ways to support
and enhance the work of practising designers. In the development of computer support tools,
methodologies and management procedures, it is crucial to know the scope of phenomena the
techniques are designed to address. It is necessary to identify the root causes of problems. The
catalogue of patterns we envisage should provide designers, managers and software
developers facing local practical problems with a toolkit of concepts with which to make sense
of design processes they want to improve. Our comparative design research programme is
intended to enable the transmission of best practice between companies and between industries
by enabling the recognition of which design processes share needs and problems, instead of
relying merely on the similarities between products.
We also believe that our comparative approach can yield benefits for design education in a
variety of design disciplines, which try to develop their own models and teaching methods
without benefiting from each other’s experiences. Many working designers we have met in
knitwear design as well as engineering fail to understand the nature of their colleagues’ work –
for instance knitwear designers typically fail to comprehend that knitting machine technicians
do designing (Eckert, 2001) – with visible adverse consequences for design processes. We find
that designers in ‘subjective’ fields like knitwear design lack understanding and respect for the
technical, problem solving aspects of their own work, while designers in ‘technical’ fields like
engineering lack understanding and respect for the holistic, perceptual or subjective thinking
involved in design. All these designers would benefit from a greater understanding of the
similarities and differences between different kinds of ‘artistic’ and ‘technical’ design. In the
long term, this more sophisticated view among designers may influence public understanding
of design. The recruitment into different design professions is influenced by the public’s
perception of the different fields, for example many believe that textile design would be more
creative then engineering. Stereotypes perpetuate old gender divisions and attract certain
personalities to certain fields.
Acknowledgements
Claudia Eckert’s contribution to this research has been supported by the EPSRC block grants
to the Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre. This paper was written while Louis
Bucciarelli was a visiting professor at the Delft University of Technology. Several members of
the Cambridge EDC have participated in our empirical studies of engineering design
9
A Comparative Programme for Design Research
processes, particularly Tim Jarratt and Brendan O’Donovan. We are very grateful to all our
informants in many companies who have given their time to interviews and observations.
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A Comparative Programme for Design Research
Biographies
Martin Stacey studied cognitive psychology before doing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at
the University of Aberdeen (1992) and postdoctoral research on intelligent computer support
for design at the Open University. He is now a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at De
Montfort University. His major research interests are in the psychology of design, intelligent
systems to support design process planning, and in human computer interaction aspects of
design support systems; he teaches software development methods and human computer
interaction.
Claudia Eckert’s education encompassed mathematics, philosophy, computer science and
artificial intelligence, as well as experience of commercial software development. She
completed a PhD in Design Studies at the Open University in 1997 followed by an ESRCfunded postgraduate research project, based primarily on a very large scale ethnographic study
of the knitwear design process. Her research on knitwear design has focused on process
modelling, the communication of design ideas, the use of sources of inspiration in various
aspects of design thinking, and on intelligent computer tools for designers. She is now a Senior
Research Associate at the Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre, where she is
investigating planning processes, design modification processes and communication in large
scale engineering projects. Analysing design processes using both a range of conceptual
paradigms and cross-domain comparisons is her core research interest.
Chris Earl is Professor of Engineering Product Design in the Department of Design and
Innovation at the Open University. His main research areas since joining the Open University
in 2000 are planning complex design processes, generative design descriptions and shape
representation for design. Previously he was at the University of Newcastle, Faculty of
Engineering where he conducted interdisciplinary research on the design of engineer-to-order
products and on planning their manufacture and assembly. He has degrees BA, MSc in
Mathematics and PhD in Design.
Louis Bucciarelli is Professor of Engineering and Technology Studies at MIT. He received
his BS from Cornell (Mechanical Engineering, 1959) and his PhD from MIT (Aeronautics and
Astronautics, 1966). He was Director of MIT’s Technology Studies Program and is a member
of MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society. His major research interests include
the development of alternative energy and residential energy instrumentation systems,
engineering education, the history of science, and ethnographic studies of the engineering
design process. He is the author of Designing Engineers (MIT Press, 1995).
John Clarkson took a BA (1984) and PhD (1988) in Engineering at the University of
Cambridge, before seven years working in design consultancy with PA Consulting Group. He
returned to the University of Cambridge in 1995, where he is now Reader in Engineering and
Director of the Engineering Design Centre, and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. His major research
interests include the development of design methodologies to address specific design issues;
medical devices; inclusive design; and the use of intelligent systems to support design process
management.
WORD COUNT, excluding title, authors, abstract, acknowledgements, references and
biographies: 4816.
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