Solution driven versus problem driven design: strategies and outcomes

doi:10.1016/j.destud.2006.01.001

Design Studies

Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2006, Pages 527-548

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2006.01.001 Get rights and content

Data from protocol studies of nine experienced industrial designers, performing the same task, were analysed to develop an expertise model of the product design process. The protocol data and the expertise model were used to identify four different cognitive strategies employed by the designers: problem driven, solution driven, information driven, and knowledge driven design strategies. These strategies were then related to task outcomes such as solution quality and creativity, and to process aspects such as iterative activity. The different strategies appear not to be related to overall solution quality in any straightforward manner. Designers using a solution driven strategy tended to have lower overall solution quality scores but higher creativity scores. Designers using a problem driven design strategy tended to produce the best results in terms of the balance of both overall solution quality and creativity.

Section snippets

The protocol study

The empirical basis of this research consisted of protocol studies of nine experienced industrial designers (with a minimum of five years post-graduation practice experience) working on a small design assignment in a laboratory setting (Dorst, 1997). This empirical study developed from earlier work based on the study of student designers, which included procedures to measure the perceived creativity and the overall quality of the resulting designs (Christiaans, 1992).

An expertise model of the product design process

In order to study the cognitive strategies employed by the designers, a conceptual model of the product design process was developed (Kruger, 1999). This model was based on empirical data derived from the protocol studies, analysed with the aid of the CommonKADS conceptual modelling language (Wielinga et al., 1993, Schreiber et al., 1994). CommonKADS offers a methodology for constructing knowledge based systems, which can also be used as a cognitive modelling tool. An expertise model was

Evidence of different cognitive strategies

We can use the empirical data from the protocol studies to categorise each designer according to the design strategies they appeared to operate. The designers' protocol statements were encoded according to the eight categories of tasks or activities identified in the expertise model. In Table 2 the percentages of frequencies of coded protocol statements per activity of the nine participants are shown. The amount of statements made within each category is an indicator of the amount of time and

Strategies versus outcomes

The design strategies described in the previous section are summaries or categorisations, based on the data and a global overview of the protocol studies of the nine designers. The strategies might be assessed by treating them as hypotheses of designer behaviour. The strategy descriptions give rise to some expectations of behaviour and outcomes, as in Table 3. For example, we expect problem driven design to result in the generation of only a few solution ideas and low creativity of solution,

Outcomes versus expectations

In Table 3, we indicated some expectations for the outcomes and results from the empirical data of the protocol studies, according to the types of design strategy. Table 14 summarises the observed results against our prior expectations, in terms of the overall solution quality scores, creativity scores, and number of requirements identified and of solutions generated. The results that contradict the expectations are italicised in the table.

For problem driven design it was expected that there

Conclusions

Individual differences between designers were clear in most of the data relating to both design process and solution outcomes, even though they were performing the same task under the same conditions. Nevertheless, some commonalities of approach did emerge in the types of cognitive strategies the designers employed, enabling them to be classified into the four types of design strategies: problem driven, solution driven, information driven and knowledge driven.

The data suggest that most

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. We are grateful to Kees Dorst and Henri Christiaans for their work in designing and implementing the original protocol study experiments, to other colleagues who evaluated the qualities of the designs produced, and of course to the designers who acted as the experiment participants. We are also grateful to Professor Bob Wielinga of Amsterdam University, who advised the

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Solution driven versus problem driven design: strategies and outcomes

Section snippets

The protocol study

An expertise model of the product design process

Evidence of different cognitive strategies

Strategies versus outcomes

Outcomes versus expectations

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Design Studies

Design Studies

Design Studies

Design Studies

Engineering design methods: strategies for product design