Design loupes: A bifocal study to improve the management of engineering design innovation by co-evaluation of the design process and information sharing activity

Abstract

After having identified the existence and having conceptually modeled the nature of general design loupes in the past year’s project, this year’s focus lies on the systematic exploration of the individual designer’s inherent reflective loupe. Based on analyzing artifacts, surveying experts, conducting inductive and deductive conceptual framing rounds, and observing controlled explorative experiments we were able to: (1) show the existence of reflective loupes; (2) identify actual practices in use by designers; (3) use reflective practices as meaningful proxies for reflective loupes that are not directly observable; and (4) create, capture and analyze concrete reflective practices in the controlled experimental environment of a laboratory. We next proceed to build upon these results to deepen our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of reflective design loupes. These studies have identified digital artifacts that allow automatic collection and analysis through the d.store software currently under development at HPI in Potsdam Germany.