Comparing the Design Cognition of Concept Design Reviews of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering Designers

Abstract

This paper presents the preliminary results of comparing the design cognition of concept design review conversations of two product design disciplines: industrial design and mechanical engineering design. The comparison is based on a protocol analysis of two concept design review cases using the FBS ontologically-based coding scheme. Inter- disciplinary differences of concept design review were first examined in terms of each review session's focus of cognitive effort expended on reasoning about design problem or design solution. Both review sessions were largely solution-focused, but the industrial design session is relatively more focused on reasoning about the design problem than the mechanical engineering design session. This matches previous findings from cognitive studies into designing processes. When examining the dynamic design cognition, the overall dynamic patterns of concept design review sessions were mainly consistent with the commonalities found in a variety of designing processes, using the measurement of cumulative occurrences of design issues. However, each individual review session's cognitive focus on either reasoning about design problem or solution appeared as constant throughout the review conversations. This implies that concept design review sessions are different from designing sessions. Previous studies into designing processes showed that designers became less focused on the design problem and more engaged in the design solution as designing progressed.