The Contact and Channel Approach (C&C2-A): Relating a System’s Physical Structure to Its Functionality

Abstract

Research on theories and models of design is often motivated from observations in designing, i.e. they address a specific purpose and are intended to describe, explain or predict certain phenomena that pose an unsolved challenge both for the research community and for design practitioners. This chapter is dedicated to one of these present challenges in engineering design: to explain and to provide efficient means to describe how the quality of a product’s technical functions and properties depend on the design of its physical characteristics.