This chapter has explored the ‘messy’ nature of the design and product development process. Section 2.1.1 provides an insight into the meaning of the word design and the spectrum of design activities. The fact that product design falls under the wider umbrella of product development is briefly discussed. It is emphasised that the product development and design activity forming the focus of the field research in this thesis is clothing and footwear product design, which is a dominant sub-class of
development and technological innovation and refers to the importance of ensuring that new products encompass the identified design values. It is pointed out that designing often doesn’t involve the creation of new product types but merely modifications to existing product lines. The usual stages involved in introducing new products are scrutinsed. It is stressed that a design rationale knowledge stmcture could play an important role in capturing and conununicating the time lines and the decisions undertaken during the new product development process to various departments in a design orientated company.
Section 2.13 introduces design methods and highlights the fact that the traditional rational methods, usually used in engineering design, are often too rigid to be applicable to industrial product design. The complexity of design has been touched upon and consideration given to how even the most adaptable design methodologies cannot account for the non-sequential characteristics of the industrial product design process. However methods which encourage the exploration of a design problem and the discussion of solutions through a process of argumentation are thought to be far more flexible and suited to the ‘messy’ nature of product design. Examination of the 3 dominant argumentation based design rationale methodologies would therefore appear to be an appropriate starting point when considering how to structure the design data amassed during the field study.
Section 2.1.4 examines the importance of brand identity and brand positioning when undertaking design and product development of branded products. A multimedia knowledge base of product development rationale would enhance the opportunity of maintaining consistent brand identity enabling new and existing members of the development team to appraise themselves of previous design decisions and gain an instant and detailed insight into the brand’s personality and development. Section 2.1.5 goes on to elaborate how design values provide a framework which corresponds to a company’s or a brand’s identity and provide a framework and parameters within which designers can use their creativity. The importance of developing clear product concepts, incorporating these design values at the very early conceptual stages of the development process is emphasised. When designing branded products, particular
attention must be paid to maintaining brand integrity through consistent communication of the design values. As with brand identity, maintaining a multimedia record of product development rationale would capture the design values and product concepts used during the development process, enabling the way in which they had been incorporated into the products to be scrutinsed by the product development team and communicated to future employees.
Section 2.1.6 alludes to the fact commercial designing is rarely the responsibility of one person and usually takes place under the auspices of a multidisciplinary product development team consisting of personnel from many different departments within a company or even from external organisations. Product development is shown to encompass not only the design of products but also the wider activities of production, distribution, marketing and sales. Successful designing cannot take place independently and without planning to encompass these related activities. This adds weight to the argument of the necessity to develop tools which effectively communicate the design process and agenda to departments throughout an organisation, ensuring that design is not an activity conducted by designers working in solitude in an ‘ivory tower’. For example systems that can alert departments about tasks remaining unfinished or late and communicate the design values and commercial requirements throughout an organisation would be invaluable. The extent to which a multimedia design rationale knowledge base might be utilised within a company involved in product development is underlined. Such a knowledge base could form a central reference point for an organisation to communicate many issues affecting the product development process including the timelines, the design values, the ergonomic requirements, the technical parameters and production methods and the marketing strategy. Clearly, a resource of this nature would be of interest and have an impact on a far wider audience than just the designers and could be contributed to and utilised by members of the many departments in a design orientated company including the marketing, sourcing, production, commercial and finance departments. Ultimately a design rationale knowledge base should enhance the communication of the development process throughout the departments of an organisation and lead to more focussed and streamlined product development.
The majority of previous research into the use of design rationale notations documents their application in the domain of engineering, where they have been found to have certain short comings. Section 2.1.7 therefore examines the differences between the domain of engineering design and that of industrial product design in order to assess whether capturing industrial product design rationale might be more effective than capturing engineering design rationale. It quickly becomes apparent that there exists greater potential benefit to capturing design rationale in industrial product design where the focus is on ergonomics and aesthetics, a lot of visual data is used containing valuable tacit knowledge, the design cycles are usually short and design consistency and integrity are paramount.
Section 2.2.1 discusses the complex, multidimensional and interconnected nature of design problems and they are shown to be non-decomposable due to their
‘interconnectedness’(Ld-wson, 1990, p45). When attempting to capture design
rationale whatever method is used clearly needs to be able to account for this complex, non-sequential and ill-defined nature of the design problem space. Section 2.2.2 describes how throughout the design process solutions to these ‘wicked’ design problems must be chosen from a number of alternatives and the outcome of a design of a product is not therefore apparent from the outset. Problem setting and solving and choosing between alternatives is a common and critical feature of designing and having access to a representation of the design rationale would support designers to reflect on their design decisions and enhance the effectiveness of the design process. The design rationale representation created for this research and outlined in chapter 6 aims to support reflection on these design decisions, based on accurate data about what was decided during the design process and on what basis, providing the opportunity to examine the path and the effectiveness of the decisions.
Section 2.3.1 alludes to the important role of design dialogue in the development process and describes how much of the tacit knowledge and information used in design is contained within visual data. The tacit nature of design dialogue means it is hard to completely keep track of the design process and the entirety of the designer’s reasoning. Representing design dialogue and rationale is further hindered by the fact
that explicit decisions pertaining to issues raised are not always made and decisions usually emerge quite erratically over time as the design process progresses. However it is argued that in product design much of the unexpressed knowledge is contained in the visual data referred to during the development process and this can be captured in a multimedia design rationale structure and would communicate valuable information to the expert eye of a designer referring to the knowledge representation at a later stage. This reinforces the necessity for a design rationale knowledge representation to be able to store data of a multimedia nature, thereby retaining this tacit knowledge. The final section 2.3.2, lists the potential benefits of structuring product design rationale.
The next chapter goes into detail on how technology is being used to support product design and explores the potential for using multimedia knowledge bases to enhance the design process.
CHAPTER 3:
TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT FOR PRODUCT DESIGN AND
DEVELOPMENT
This chapter presents an examination o f how product design and development is increasingly being supported with the use o f technology. A case study describes the clothing design and manufacture process and how computer aided techniques have been deployed in the clothing industry. The case study serves to illustrate the extent to which new technology has been embraced by design based industry. The potential for using multimedia knowledge bases to support product design is explored in more detail with a further case study on the impetus fo r multimedia textile libraries. The chapter concludes with a summary o f the critical points.
3.1. Supporting the Design Process with Technology
Technology is increasingly being used to support a wide variety of design based companies enabling them to reduce product development lead times, and thereby enhancing their competitiveness. Lawson identified four potential roles for the use of computers in a design environment: 'In the 'Management Role’ the computer is helping the designer to run the business In the 'Information Processing Role’, the computer is used to hold and reproduce data usually either in the form o f drawings or
written documents When we move on to the 'Solution Evaluation Role’ the
computer is being used in some way to model a proposed design, and to generate
output which helps to evaluate the design Finally we can envisage the computer in
a 'Solution Generation Role ’, in which the computer actually suggests either part or all o f a design solution.... Clearly this sort o f involvement brings the computer right into the very heart o f the design process itself, and is therefore much more likely to be controversial than our first role which kept the computer to a more remote
management role.’ (Lawson, 1990, p.203) The design rationale knowledge
representation at the heart of this research will be seen in Chapter 6 to encompasses the first three of Lawson’s identified roles:
The management role - the representation supports management tasks including alerting the design team to deadlines, monitoring the effectiveness of the dynamics of the design team, and allowing individuals to reflect on their working practices;
The information processing role - the representation enables the extensive amounts of design data used during the development process to be stored electronically. However, it goes a stage further than just storing data by structuring it in a manner that the rationale and context of the design data is also retained;
The solution evaluation role - the representation is constructed concurrently with the design process and it retains the design context and rationale. It empowers designers to evaluate their actions and decisions during the design process and will have a knock on effect on the outcome of the designs.
In the following section a case study explores how computer supported design and manufacture has been deployed within the clothing industry and serves to illustrate the extent to which technology is being embraced by design orientated industry.