Understanding the differences between how novice and experienced designers approach design tasks

Ahmed, Shamsuddin; Wallace, KM; Blessing, Luciënne

doi:10.1007/s00163-002-0023-z

Cited by 358 publications

(277 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…According to this perspective, meaningful opportunities for the learning of engineering tend to be situated within social, collaborative work on real engineering tasks and in the context of practices consistent with engineering culture. Studies of engineers at work have shown that these practices include, for example, defining the engineering design problem to be solved, framing the problem from one's own and the client's experiences, determining requirements and constraints, evaluating tentative design ideas before implementing them, analyzing and testing potential and realized solutions, and creating representations of designed artifacts (Ahmed, Wallace, & Blessing, 2003;Bucciarelli, 1994;Cross, 2003;Dym, 1994, NRC, 2009National Research Council [NRC], 2012;Tang & Leifer, 1991). The body of research shows that informed engineering designers carry out these practices in patterns that are distinct from those of beginning designers, and design expertise is characterized by these ''informed design'' strategies (Crismond & Adams, 2012).…”

Section: Research Framework and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Practices of Preservice Elementary Teachers in an Integrated Engineering and Literature Experience

Wendell¹

2014

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

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Section: Research Framework and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Practices of Preservice Elementary Teachers in an Integrated Engineering and Literature Experience

Wendell¹

2014

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

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“…For example, Bruner (1960) makes the case that experts are often able to use intuitive thinking (an instance of unexplained reasoning), as opposed to analytic thinking, because of their deep subject matter expertise. Similarly Ahmed and Wallace (2003) note that when placed in new, complex situations experts will utilize a variety of strategies. At the same time the continuum does not suggest that non-expert students never use principle-based reasoning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning Strategies in the Context of Engineering Design with Everyday Materials

Worsley¹,

Blikstein

2017

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

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Abstract''Making'' represents an increasingly popular label for describing a form of engineering design. While making is growing in popularity, there are still open questions about the strategies that students are using in these activities. Assessing and improving learning in making/ engineering design contexts require that we have a better understanding of where students' ideas are coming from and a better way to characterize student progress in open-ended learning environments. In this article, we use a qualitative analysis of students' responses (N 5 13) in order to identify the origins of their ideas. Four strategies emerged from this analysis: unexplained reasoning; materials-based reasoning; example-based reasoning; and principle-based reasoning. We examine key characteristics of each strategy and how each strategy relates to learning and expertise through in-depth case studies. Furthermore, we identify how these four strategies are a complement to prior work on analogical problem solving and creativity, and offer a number of unique contributions that are particularly relevant for engineering education. Finally, we include two coding schemes that can be used to classify students' responses. Studying reasoning strategies in this way is a fruitful means for characterizing student learning in complex learning environments. Moreover, understanding reasoning strategies impacts the nature of student-teacher discussions and informs how to help students progress most effectively.

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“…In think-aloud sessions, designers may use terms like "looks right" without giving more detailed justifications other expressions such as "worked before". This phenomenon has been called "intuition based upon previous experience" [1], contrasting it with situations where the designer refers to past designs in a deliberate manner.…”

Section: Implicit Constraints In Expert Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Later that line almost invariably turns out to be flawed, thus validating the power of the intuitive constraint that was used. While analogies of design processes with domains such as chess have been contested since design is a much less well-defined problem [1], the implicit nature of these intuitions across so many domains cannot be ignored. Among expert human designers, similar questioning occasionally reveals domain-specific biases, but the presence of such constraints may be more widespread than appears in introspective testimony.…”

Section: Implicit Constraints In Expert Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovering Implicit Constraints in Design

Dabbeeru

Mukerjee

2008

Design Computing and Cognition '08

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Abstract. In familiar design domains, expert designers are able to quickly focus on "good designs", based on constraints they have learned while exploring the design space. This ability to learn novel constraints is a key aspect in which design differs from traditional optimization; the constraints on the search are constantly re-defined based on the search experience itself. Moreover, such constraints are often implicit, i.e. the designer may find it difficult to articulate these constraints and provide reasons for them. Here, we ask if computer-aided-design systems can discover such implicit constraints in well-understood design situations, where the function can be articulated clearly enough to be quantified in terms of performance metrics. By considering function across a large number of design instances, patterns of functional feasibility may be learned as a byproduct of evaluating different designs. We show how patterns of functional infeasibility result in novel constraints that rule out certain regions of the design space. We demonstrate this process using examples from the design of simple locking mechanisms, and as in human experience, we show that the nature of the constraints learned depends on the extent of exposure in the design space, and may be widely variable in early stages. We also show how the process of design change, when the design space is modified, e.g. by adding new design variables, can build on patterns learned on past designs. In conclusion, we discuss the ramifications of this process on chunking and representational change, and also on design creativity.

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Understanding the differences between how novice and experienced designers approach design tasks

Cited by 358 publications

References 18 publications

Design Practices of Preservice Elementary Teachers in an Integrated Engineering and Literature Experience

Design Practices of Preservice Elementary Teachers in an Integrated Engineering and Literature Experience

Reasoning Strategies in the Context of Engineering Design with Everyday Materials

Discovering Implicit Constraints in Design

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