FOUR CASES FROM SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS TO ENGINEERING DESIGN

Abstract

Four cases from social sciences are collected in this paper to illustrate how social sciences are relevant to engineering design. The first case, which originates from psychology, discusses how the representation of a problem would affect the human’s problem-solving skill. This case highlights the need of proper design representation for both innovation and communication. The second case shows how peer pressure would affect a personal judgment on a problem. The result of this case emphasizes the importance of the group environment and human interactions to the performance of a design team. The third and fourth cases are two famous examples respectively taken from two mathematically rigorous theories in economics, namely, game theory and social choice theory. The third case discusses the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory, and it illustrates that rational individual decisions do not necessarily lead to a collective rational decision. This case result suggests the development of a mathematical framework for group decision making in team-based engineering design. The fourth case is concerned with the aggregation of individual preferences towards the agreement on a design decision. While the goodness of design can be evaluated from various aspects and subject to different people’s judgment, how to aggregate these opinions to form a logical design choice is not entirely obvious. The fourth case suggests the development of a logical foundation for choosing a good design based on individual preferences or selections. The selection of these four cases is intended to illuminate some unobvious research results from social sciences and their relevance to engineering design. In turn, it is encouraged to explore the multidisciplinary nature of engineering design research and education by investigating the efforts from social sciences.