Philip Cash · Tino Stanković Mario Štorga Editors
Experimental Design Research Approaches, Perspectives, Applications
Experimental Design Research
[email protected]
Philip Cash · Tino Stankovic´ · Mario Štorga Editors
Experimental Design Research Approaches, Perspectives, Applications
13
[email protected]
Editors Philip Cash Department of Management Engineering Technical University of Denmark Lyngby Denmark
Mario Štorga Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture University of Zagreb Zagreb Croatia
Tino Stankovic´ Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Zurich Switzerland
ISBN 978-3-319-33779-1 ISBN 978-3-319-33781-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33781-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938384 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
[email protected]
Foreword
That design research is difficult to undertake is a self-evident truism. This book’s unique role is to help researchers with this difficult task by giving a theoretical and practical understanding of the key issues. Design research has established that design is an activity or process, whether undertaken individually, in local teams or in widely distributed groups, which can be managed, controlled and supported. However, the detailed understanding that will lead to further insights and innovative support approaches across the process can only be achieved by more extensive and rigorous experimental design research. It is useful to contrast it with the classical scientific method. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as “a method or procedure that has characterized science since the seventeenth century, consisting of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” This definition can be extended, albeit in a simplified form, as conceive a hypothesis or generate a theory, in conjunction with undertaking some background contextual investigation or some modelling, construct an experimental approach, perhaps with well-instrumented test rigs and then conduct a series of experiments with a detailed control of key variables and then compare the results with the theory or the analytical models and draw some conclusions. These approaches are recorded, published and crucially are capable or should be capable of being repeated. The classical scientific method relies on the control of the experimental environment and it relies on the control of key variables. This is very difficult to achieve in design research when the experimental environment might be an engineering design office or meeting room or design studio or even an individual’s workspace, and then there are the two key variables. First the engineer or designer or multidisciplinary team being investigated will have varying amounts of experience, training, abilities and so on. The second key variable being the actual task. This creation of the design is undertaken at varying levels of abstraction and detail. Is it on paper, in the computer modelling environment or an actual artefact or machine or system?
v
[email protected]
Foreword
vi
Thus when undertaking design research it is not possible to replicate the classical approach and new approaches are required. It may be necessary to incorporate other research approaches that come from psychology, management and other human focused research to create a research method or a variety of methods that work and produce credible and valuable results in this difficult area of design. Thus this book is a remarkable attempt to bring together a number of key strands in this very challenging area. It is a treasure trove of insights and techniques. It is particularly helpful that it includes some detailed discussions about the theoretical basis for design research and picks up some key themes, such as the interplay between methods and methodology and links together a number of key perspectives. It also starts the discussion about establishing standards in design research, something that will be very important to increase the levels of rigour in what is effectively a new discipline. It is always important to point out to researchers in the design area that Sir Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 and the early work of Taylor on Manufacturing and Management disciplines was first published in 1900! This book is valuable in that it brings together the state of the art, but the key contribution is the structure and synthesis that the editors have put into the compilation of the work. Thus the four key areas are made clear and explained. These are the foundations, classical approaches, computational approaches and the issues associated with building theories and creating genuine, valuable and useable knowledge. As an aside, the section on computational approaches is particularly interesting and valuable in that it reflects the way that engineers and designers work and anticipates the way that design research will be conducted in future years. It is through books like this that rigour can continue to increase and standard approaches can be created as it is though rigour and standard approaches that the body of knowledge can increase and be linked together and raw data can be shared. This will give the results of design research real credibility and real traction to practitioners of all sorts. The book thus represents a real contribution and is not only an invaluable basic text for researchers but also an important step on the way to understanding this topic called design. Prof. Stephen Culley Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Bath UK
[email protected]
Preface
This book’s origins lie in the editors’ own experiences of developing and reviewing experimental studies of design; and in particular, from our collaborative excitement when combining new methods and disciplinary insights with more traditional experimental design research. Researchers face ever-growing technical, methodological, and theoretical possibilities and we have found in our own research, as well as that of our students, that getting to grips with these topics can prove somewhat daunting. This book aims to both help researchers share in our enthusiasm for experimental design research, and provide practical support in bringing together the many different perspectives and methods available to develop scientifically robust and impactful experimental studies. Fundamentally, this book builds on the methodological foundations laid down by many authors in the design research field, as well as our field’s long tradition of boundary spanning empirical studies. Without these works this book would not have been possible. In this sense each chapter reflects and builds on key thinking in the design research field in order to provide the reader with chapters that not only constitute distinct research contributions in their own right but also help bring cohesive insight into experimental design research as a whole. Throughout the writing process our focus has continually been on bringing together insights for researchers both young and established, with the aim to take experimental design research to the next level of scientific development. In particular it is not our aim to lay down a prescriptive set of methodological rules, but rather provide researchers with the concepts, paradigms and means they need to understand, bridge and build on the many research methodologies and methods in this domain. Thus this book forms a bridge between specific methods and wider methodology in order to both develop better methods and also contextualise their work in the wider methodological landscape. Over the last decades design research has grown as a field in terms of both its scientific and industrial significance. However, with this growth has come with challenges of scientific rigour, integrating diverse empirical and experimental approaches, and building wider scientific impact outside of design research. We see vii
[email protected]
Preface
viii
this book as a contribution to this process of scientific and methodological development, and more generally see this process of growth as a necessary and inspiring development taking design research into the future alongside its more fundamental brethren, such as psychology, artificial intelligence or biotechnology. This book reflects our vision of design research as an ever more rigorous and scientifically exciting field, and we think that this is also reflected in the substantial and insightful works provided by each of the chapter authors, without whom this book would have been impossible! Philip Cash Tino Stankovic´ Mario Štorga
[email protected]
Contents
Part I The Foundations of Experimental Design Research 1
An Introduction to Experimental Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Philip Cash, Tino Stanković and Mario Štorga
2
Evaluation of Empirical Design Studies and Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Mahmoud Dinar, Joshua D. Summers, Jami Shah and Yong-Seok Park
3
Quantitative Research Principles and Methods for Human-Focused Research in Engineering Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Mark A. Robinson
Part II Classical Approaches to Experimental Design Research 4
Creativity in Individual Design Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Yukari Nagai
5
Methods for Studying Collaborative Design Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Andy Dong and Maaike Kleinsmann
6
The Integration of Quantitative Biometric Measures and Experimental Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Quentin Lohmeyer and Mirko Meboldt
7
Integration of User-Centric Psychological and Neuroscience Perspectives in Experimental Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Claus-Christian Carbon
Part III Computation Approaches to Experimental Design Research 8
The Complexity of Design Networks: Structure and Dynamics. . . . . 129 Dan Braha
ix
[email protected]
Contents
x
9
Using Network Science to Support Design Research: From Counting to Connecting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Pedro Parraguez and Anja Maier
10 Computational Modelling of Teamwork in Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Ricardo Sosa 11 Human and Computational Approaches for Design Problem-Solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Paul Egan and Jonathan Cagan Part IV Building on Experimental Design Research 12 Theory Building in Experimental Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Imre Horváth 13 Synthesizing Knowledge in Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Kalle A. Piirainen 14 Scientific Models from Empirical Design Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 John S. Gero and Jeff W.T. Kan
[email protected]
Contributors
Dan Braha New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA Jonathan Cagan Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA Claus-Christian Carbon University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany; Research Group for Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics and Gestalt (EPÆG), Bamberg, Germany; Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany Philip Cash Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark Mahmoud Dinar George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA Andy Dong Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Paul Egan Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich), Zurich, Switzerland John S. Gero Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC, USA Imre Horváth Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Jeff W.T. Kan City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong Maaike Kleinsmann Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands Quentin Lohmeyer Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Anja Maier DTU Management Engineering, Engineering Systems Division, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Lyngby, Denmark
xi
[email protected]
Contributors
xii
Mirko Meboldt Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Yukari Nagai Nagai Lab, School of Knowledge Science Mechanism of Decision Marking, Japan; Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Tatsunokuchi, Ishikawa, Nomi, Japan Yong-Seok Park Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA Pedro Parraguez DTU Management Engineering, Engineering Systems Division, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Lyngby, Denmark Kalle A. Piirainen DTU Management Engineering, Technology and Innovation Management, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark; LUT School of Business and Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland Mark A. Robinson Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Jami Shah Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Ricardo Sosa CoLab Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand Tino Stanković Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Joshua D. Summers Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA Mario Štorga Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
[email protected]
