Theoretical Drivers for the Design Process in Railway Projects

2.4.1 Definitions of the Design Process

There are several definitions for the concept of designing such as that by Pahl and Beitz, (1988) who defined it as the process of optimising a certain group of objectives within a range of inconsistent constraints. They added that designing’s requirements always change in order to attain an applicable and optimised solution for a certain group of circumstances. In view of that, the process of design requires a strong degree of collaboration with people from different areas and majors. Besides, there should be an operable amount of information administrated and encouraged by a sound and well-built organization (Hassan, 1996). With that, design optimisation as a process is achieved through the step of decision-making based on the most recent restructured version of design information.

As for building design, Hassan (1996) defined it as

“a key process sets the client’s and end user’s clear necessities to create and produce, relying on his or her knowledge and experience concerning a certain topic. In other words, it is a group of documents that give an account and justifies a project that would meet the related requirements, along with other types of requirements, namely: statutory and implicit imposed by a certain domain, context and/or the environment”.

Likewise, Vakili-Ardebili (2005) defines it as

“concerning the process of building design, it is mainly regarded an active process that includes an improvement taking into consideration that the design stage is a continuously developing system whose level of advancement and progress compared with previous experiences are constructed in the primary stages of design building through effective strategies and innovations”.

Accordingly, from these definitions above, with the intention of achieving a cooperative process of design, requirements of objectives and compliance should be clearly formulated before the design’s process starts. Yet, the cooperative process should preserve a certain degree of flexibility and plainness to encourage the atmosphere of innovations.

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2.4.2 Prescriptive and Descriptive Design Models

The history of the Design Methods Movement dates back to 1960s in Britain, where all its members believe that design is not mainly constructed on intuition and experience, but it should be carefully and deeply revised by a more organized and scientific process that could be set (Goldschmidt, 2014). This is considered the first effort to construct the design process. Hubka (2013) suggested that a large number of models structured in the course of that period were flowcharts, particularly the Analysis-Synthesis-Evaluation (ASE) that were suggested by Asimow (1962) as models of the design process and were widely accepted. The structure of the ASE model stemmed from the problem-solving paradigm as information processing; it is the same paradigm that founded artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Moreover, to elucidate the iterative nature, of design researchers use a spiral metaphor, from abstract to a concrete solution (Watts, 1966). With that, Alexander (1964) suggested a prescriptive method where the designer has no choice but to adapt previously rigid programmed steps contrary to the paradigm of creative thinking. Still, this model is considered to be ineffective, leading researchers to rethink and recommend a novel paradigm concerning descriptive design models. Moreover, it is found that descriptive design models related to real design behaviour are necessary to develop the actions of understanding and thinking as it exists in our real-life situations (Goldschmidt, 2014). Consequently, an action of partnership is effectively created between designer and computer (Kalay et al., 1987). With that, the design has been simplified rather than being restricted to the standard solutions, and thus, that enable the design team to attain innovative solutions in the design of the buildings. Accordingly, this research relies on the descriptive paradigm for collaborative and collective partnership and process leading to map striving not to limit the creativity of design.

Besides, Gupta and Murthy (1980) maintained that the cognitive design process consists of three phases (cited in Hassan, 1996): (i) Exploratory Phase, (ii) Transforming Phase, and (iii) Convergence Phase. As for the exploratory Phase, it is constructed on the data provided in the brief. Throughout this phase,

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the designer’s task lies in attaining an adequate understanding concerning the problem in research (collaboration issues in the case of this research). In the Transformation Phase, the process of creation begins where the designer, with the help of knowledge, skills and certain talents recommends effective and alternative solutions to the problem (explore solutions through interviews in the case if this research). During the Convergence stage, the designer’s main function is to assess the proposed solutions in terms of feasibility and applicability in an attempt to reach a decision regarding the optimal choice. It should be noted that numerous researchers have adopted a parallel approach, concentrating on the designer’s thought process (Austin et al., 2001; Evans, Powell and Talbot, 1982). However, it is still possible to consider the cognitive process of design evolution as subjective and different between individuals.

Organisational design process has been described according to Laseau (2001) as a “architectural practice” enclosing the following steps: (i) building programme, (ii) schematic design, (iii) preliminary design, (iv) design development, (v) contract documents, (vi) shop drawings, and (vii) construction”. Regarding the aforementioned steps, Laseau recommended a 5-step linear process model that included these five steps, namely: problem definition, developing alternatives, evaluation, selection and communication.

So far, the current design process’s generic descriptive model can merely be applied as a framework, centring on the required organisational and contractual arrangements. Thus, this kind of approach to map the design process has been adopted by numerous researchers (e.g. Ahuja and Nandakumar, 1986).

2.4.3 Modelling the Conceptual Stage

It is argued that the conceptual design stage lies more in “problem finding”

and less about “problem-solving” Sebastian (2007). Still, if the goals of the design are not initially established, it is possible that design team members will work towards inconsistent objectives. Researchers can elucidate this statement in the sense that the design process is no longer administrated in a restrictive manner (offering prescriptive solutions without any flexibility). Thus,

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the design problem’s analysis is considered an essential step to the process, as practical design problems are variable, distinctive and uneasy to comprehend a recognise (Laseau, 2001).

As for the creativity and cognitive information processing elements, it is noted that they make the conceptual design stage the most problematic part to automate the design process (Newsome, Spillers and Finger, 1989). For instance, in railway design, the complexity of its work is getting high due to the introduction of new additional design criteria in the related system. Indeed, the scope of the concept design remains to explore the numerous existing solutions to a problem until the best design solution arises (Chakrabarti and Bligh, 1994). it has been concluded that there is no universal term for concept design. Nevertheless, a process that enables the transparency of the collaborative workflows can facilitate the development of a common definition between stakeholders in order to reduce uncertain (Steele, 2000). As a matter of fact, the concept design’s scope aims to explore several current solutions to a certain problem until the top design solution is achieved (Chakrabarti and Bligh, 1994). The latest has been followed to explore the suggestions to overcome the collaboration issues.