Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-15T11:55:17.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Equations aren’t enough: informal modeling in design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

Eswaran Subrahmanian
Affiliation:
Engineering Design Research Center
Suresh L. Konda
Affiliation:
Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
Sean N. Levy
Affiliation:
Engineering Design Research Center
Yoram Reich
Affiliation:
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706, U.S.A.
Arthur W. Westerberg
Affiliation:
Engineering Design Research Center
Ira Monarch
Affiliation:
Engineering Design Research Center

Abstract

Arguing that design is a social process, we expand the meaning of modeling and analysis to include all activities facilitating continual refinement and criticism of the design requirements, process and solutions. We do not assume any a priori methods for modeling or analysis; rather, we provide a framework and an approach to study designers and give them whatever modeling and analysis capabilities they choose. Our approach is the basis for a support tool, n–dim, currently under development.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bucciarelli, L. L. 1988. An ethnographic perspective on engineering design, Design Studies 9 (3), 159168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckley, C. 1985. Implementation of the SMART information retrieval system. Technical Report 85686, Cornell University, Department of Computer Science.Google Scholar
Conklin, J. and Begeman, M. L. 1988. gIBIS: a hypertext tool for exploratory policy discussion, ACM Transaction on Office Information Systems 6 (4), 303331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coyne, R. F. 1991. ABLOOS: A Computational Design Framework For Layout Synthesis. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.Google Scholar
DeMillo, R. A., Lipton, R. J. and Perlis, A. J. 1979. Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs, Communication of the ACM 22, 271280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, P. K. 1975. Against Method. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Finger, S., Subrahmanian, E. and Gardner, E. 1993. A case study in concurrent engineering for transformer design, Proceedings of ICED-93 (The Hague), Rosenburg, N. F. M., ed. Zürich: Heurista, pp 14331440.Google Scholar
Floyd, C, Mehl, W.-M., Reisin, F.-M., Schmidt, G. and Wolf, G. 1989. Out of Scandinavia: alternative approaches to software design and system development, Human-Computer Interaction 4 (4), 253350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fritts, M., Comstock, E., Lin, W.-C. and Salvasen, N. 1990. Hydro-numeric design: performance prediction and impact on hull design, Transactions SNAME 98, 473493.Google Scholar
Hales, S. 1987. Analysis of The Engineering Design Process in an Industrial Context. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.Google Scholar
Jacobson, I., Christerson, M., Josson, P. and Övergaad, G. 1992. Object-oriented Software Engineering—A Use Case Driven Approach. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Kanigel, R. 1991. The Man Who Knew Infinity. New York: Charles Scribners.Google Scholar
Konda, S., Monarch, I., Sargent, P. and Subrahmanian, E. 1992. Shared memory in design: a unifying theme for research and practice, Research in Engineering Design 4 (1), 2342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leifer, L. J. 1991. Instrumenting the design process, Proceedings of ICED-91, Zürich.Google Scholar
Levy, S., Subrahmanian, E., Konda, S. L., Coyne, R. F., Westerberg, A. W. and Reich, Y. 1993. an overview of the n–dim environment. Technical Report EDRC–05–65–93, Engineering Design Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.Google Scholar
Muller, M. J., Kuhn, S., and Meskill, J. A. (eds) 1992. PDC’92: Proceedings of The Participatory Design Conference (Cambridge, MA), Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility, Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
Namioka, A. and Schuler, D. (eds) 1990. PDC’90: Proceedings of The 1990 Participatory Design Conference (Seattle, WA), Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility, Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
Petroski, H. 1992. To Engineer is Human. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Piela, P., Katzenberg, B., and Mckelvey, R. 1992 Integrating the user into research in engineering design systems, Research in Engineering Design 3 (4), 211221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reich, Y., Konda, S., Monarch, I. and Subrahmanian, E. 1992. Participation and design: an extended view, eds, Muller, M. J., Kuhn, S. and Meskill, J. A.PDC’92: Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (Cambridge, MA) Palo Alto, CA. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, pp 6371.Google Scholar
Salton, G. 1971. The SMART Retrieval System—Experiments in Automatic Document Processing. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Sargent, P., Subrahmanian, E., Downs, M., Greene, R. and Rishel, D. 1992. Materials’ information and conceptual data modeling. In Computerization and Networking of Materials Databases; 3rd, ASTM STP 1140, eds, Barry, T. I. and Reynard, K. W., American Society For Testing and Materials.Google Scholar
Subrahmanian, E., Westerberg, A. W. and Prodnar, G. 1991. Towards a shared information environment for engineering design. In: Computer-Aided Cooperative Product Development, MIT-JSME Workshop (Nov 1989), eds, Siriram, D., Logcher, R. and Hukuda, S.Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Taggart, R. (ed) 1980. Ship Design and Construction. New York: The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.Google Scholar
Tucker, C. L. (ed) 1989. Fundamentals of Computer Modeling For Polymer Processing. Munich: Hanser.Google Scholar
Ungar, D. and Smith, R. B. 1991. SELF: the power of simplicity. LISP and Symbolic Computation 4 (3), 187205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar