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Parametric optimization techniques allow building designers to pursue multiple performance objectives, which can benefit the overall design. However, the strategies used by architecture and engineering graduate students when working with optimization tools are unclear, and ineffective computational design procedures may limit their success as future designers. In response, this re-search identifies several designerly behaviors of graduate students when responding to a conceptual building design optimization task. It uses eye-tracking, screen recording, and empirical methods to code their behaviors following the situated FBS framework. From these data streams, three different types of design iterations emerge: one by the designer alone, one by the optimizer alone, and one by the designer incorporating feedback from the optimizer. Based on the timing and frequency of these loops, student participants were characterized as completing partial, crude, or complete optimization cycles while developing their designs. This organization of optimization techniques establishes reoccurring strategies employed by developing designers, which can encourage future pedagogical approaches that empower students to incorporate complete optimization cycles while improving their designs. It can also be used in future research studies to establish clear links between types of design optimization behavior and design quality.
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Exploring the Effectiveness of Providing Structured DfE Design Strategies During Conceptual Design
The fuzzy front end of engineering design can present a difficult challenge, and as such, recent engineering design research has focused on guiding and influencing the way a designer ideates. Early ideation can be especially difficult when attempting to integrate specific design objectives in product design, called Design for X (DfX). Some examples of DfX are Design for Manufacturing (DfM), Design for Assembly (DfA), Design for Function (DfF), and Design for Safety (DfS). This paper will present two experiments exploring the efficacy of a structured Design for the Environment (DfE) design method called the GREEn Quiz (Guidelines and Regulations for Early design for the Environment) that provides designers with sustainable design knowledge during the conceptual design phase. The GREEn Quiz operates on a web-based platform and queries the designer about their design concepts; an end-of-quiz report provides abstract DfE knowledge to designers. While this abstract knowledge was able to be applied by designers in a former study, we hypothesize that providing targeted, specific design strategies during conceptual design may enable better integration in concept generation by novice designers. In this study, we created these DfE strategies, embedded these in the GREEn Quiz, and studied the efficacy of these strategies when presented to designers at both the expert and novice levels. Experimental results suggest that respondents with access to the strategy-based GREEn Quiz produced concepts with evidence of more sustainable design decisions and higher solution quality scores when compared to previous respondents and the control groups. This research encourages the consideration of downstream environmental impact knowledge during conceptual design, resulting in lower-impact products regardless of the previous DfE expertise of the designer.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1826469
- PAR ID:
- 10160482
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers in Engineering
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2019-98286
