methods and resources for conceptual design

METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

A. Martin-Erro , M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

UNED-ETSII (Ingeniería del Diseño)

DYNA, July 2015, vol. 90, no. 4, p.380-385. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6036/7212

INTRODUCTION

Conceptual design is one of the most important stages of industrial product development process:

“The most influencing design stage” (Horváth, 2005).

“The phase where engineering science, practical knowledge, production methods and the commercial topics need to join and where the most important decisions are taken, with a significant impact in the product cost, reliability and final features” (French, 1985).

Being the importance of conceptual design process, it is evident that it must be used all available means and resources to help developing better and more innovative concept design solutions.

Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142M. J. French, Conceptual design for engineers. Springer, 1985

METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro , M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

INTRODUCTION (II)

Methods and resources:

Information: is one of the main resources that support to the conceptual design process, which is mainly fed from designers knowledge, information gathered by other product development process actors (marketing, manufacture, packing and distribution), as well as the one that was previously registered.

Visual tools (schemes, mind maps, and mainly sketches) its use is understood as one of the most effective problem solving mental processes. Idea generation support means: external (images, photographs, schemes, graphics, mock-ups, any objects (Brereton, 2000) and mainly sketches (Goel ,1995) (Ferguson,1994).

Creative methods:. Intuitive (Brainstorming) , logical (TRIZ) as well as visual thinking-based (Mind maps, Brainsketching)

Use of computers: scarce use of computer systems at this design stage. Despite of it, efforts are made from various approaches [12] [2] . Avaliable commercial specific applications, mainly focused on geometric modeling.

M. Brereton and B. McGarry, “An observational study of how objects support engineering design thinking and communication: implications for the design of tangible media,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2000, pp. 217–224.V. Goel, Sketches of thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995.E. Ferguson, “Engineering and the Mind’s Eye,” The MIT press, 1994W. Hsu and B. Liu, “Conceptual design: issues and challenges,” Computer-Aided Design., vol. 32, no. 14, pp. 849–850, 2000.Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142


STUDY ABOUT METHODS AND RESOURCES FOR CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

our goal:

to study design professional´s preferences on methods, means and resources for conceptual design process.

By a questionnaire made up of 23 questions related to the following topics:

· Interviewed designers and engineers information · Conceptual design process.· Conceptual design process support means· · Use of creative methods.· Idea generation support resources· · Creative stimuli resources·· Conceptual design/design reuse knowledge management

Two groups for this study:

· Design engineers· Industrial designers

Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142M. J. French, Conceptual design for engineers. Springer, 1985


DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS


UK

Korea

USA

Argentina

Uganda

Italy

Spain

Respondent professional´s profile

Experience of respondent professionals

Countries

RESULTS

importance of conceptual design process


RESULTS

CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS


Time spent on conceptual design (percentage related on whole development process)

(most time consuming: concept evaluation (61% of whole conceptual design stage time) followed by idea generation (28% of whole conceptual design stage time).

Conceptual Detail Verification/test Production

Problem definition

Idea generation

Idea selection

Concept evaluation

RESULTSCONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS


Number of iterations applied in the conceptual design process

Average of generated ideas

RESULTSCONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS


Stackeholder implication on the conceptual design process

user Implication on the process

RESULTSCONCEPTUAL DESIGN SUPPORT RESOURCES

The use of conventional methods (notebooks and paper sketches) is preferential compared with computational applications (computer-aided sketching and CAD).




Use of computer sketching applications is higher for designers, being more preferential the use of CAD systems for engineers



Is indicated a scarce use of commercial applications currently available for conceptual

process support, especially at earlier design stages

RESULTSUSE OF CREATIVE TOOLS


Most used creative method, for both designers and engineers was Brainstorming

TRIZ was the least used creative method Visual creative methods were well placed

RESULTSIDEA GENERATION SUPPORT RESOURCES


Stimuli sources for design solutions and ideas are almost similar for both engineers and

designers

Resources and tools used at the idea generation substage are preferably in paper (notebooks of notes and sketches) for both engineers and designers

RESULTSCONCEPTUAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT/ DESIGN REUSE


74 % of respondent completely agreed that conceptual design stage is an important knowledge source (15 % partially agreed).

62 % of engineers partially uses other designs for his projects and 5 % reuses them to a great extent

A great amount of the designers starts his projects from scratch (67 %), other uses old designs (33 %), but none of the respondent designers highly uses existing designs.



Design information reuse is equally used by designers and engineers. Most used information by designers is life cycle information as well as of packaging, eco design, or materials costs


Filed conceptual design information is mainly individual and for own initiative (50 % of all respondent), existing centralized systems in some cases (10 % in engineers), but especially by designers (30 % ) who answered that all conceptual design information is stored by a centralized system.

The respondent indicating a centralized knowledge management or a knowledge management at department answered to perform a minor number of iterations in conceptual design process as well as and minor amount of design ideas generated.

Ideas capture it is a common practice for both engineers and designers:

97% captures ideas ideas at any time. In this case, traditional resources are preferred: notebook (40 % of the answers) together with any paper or a napkin (23 %).

Most used digital mean is a photography shot with an smartphone (28 %) and less used are the sketching applications available for mobile devices (9 %).


CONCLUSSIONS


This study confirms the difference on creative methods application by industrial designers and design engineers, also showing a prevalence of intuitive creative methods to logical, even between engineers.

Relevance of visual thinking at earlier design stages was shown.

Conceptual design commercial computer applications, are scarcely used, prevailing traditional means, mainly at the initial conceptual design phases, where creativity factor plays a more relevant role.

Use of conventional CAD, at the expense of more suited applications for conceptual process, such as sketching software.

It is confirmed the importance of the knowledge management at the conceptual design phase,

Conceptual design information is mainly treated to individual title. Future optimization ways can be focusing towards a suitable design knowledge management. One important part is design reuse.