A Comparative Programme for Design Research

MARTIN STACEY

Department of Computer and Information Sciences, De Montfort University, Milton Keynes, UK.

CLAUDIA ECKERT

Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

CHRISTOPHER EARL

Department of Design and Innovation, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

LOUIS L. BUCCIARELLI

School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

P. JOHN CLARKSON

Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

Proceedings of the Design Research Society 2002 International Conference: Common Ground
Brunel University, London, September 2000.

ABSTRACT. As 'designing' is a diverse phenomenon, but design processes have many important features in common with some other design processes, we can gain insights into how and why designers do what they do by making cross-domain comparisons. In this paper we propose a research programme for design studies: systematising these insights by using comparisons between design processes to compile a catalogue of patterns of designing - sets of features of design processes linked by causal mechanisms, that in combination with each other give a wide range of design processes their distinctive forms. The catalogue of patterns should include patterns describing features at different levels, linked by different sorts of causal mechanisms, so that different theoretical views and scales of description should be integrated in a richer unified understanding of designing.

KEYWORDS. Comparative design research, research methodology, patterns, similarity.

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