Creation and characterization of design spaces

Abstract

Designers advance in the design processes by creating and expanding the design space where the solution they develop unfolds. This process requires the co-evolution of the problem and the solution spaces through design state changes. In this paper, we provide a methodology to capture how designers create, structure and expand their design space across time. Design verbalizations from a team of three professional engineers are coded into design elements from the Function-Behavior-Structure ontology to identify the characteristics of design state changes. Three types of changes can occur: a change within the problem space, a change within the solution space or a change between the problem and the solution spaces or inversely. The paper explores how to represent such changes by generating a network of design concepts. By tracking the evolution of the design space over time, we represent how the design space expands as the design activity progresses.