Exploring how design guidelines benefit design engineers: an international and global perspective

Abstract

A multitude of design guidelines that are intended to support design engineers with knowledge and information during the embodiment design of physical products have been developed back in the 1980s and 1990s. However, since then, the setting in which products are developed and designed has changed and associated tasks and activities are carried out globally rather than locally. Yet, knowledge on the benefit of such design guidelines and their impact on the performance of multinational design engineers from different regions and with different levels of experience is still lacking. To address this, a mobile eye tracking study has been developed and carried out with 47 differently experienced practitioners from Germany, Eastern Europe and Asia. The results show differences in how design engineers from different regions with different levels of experience may benefit from design guidelines and how design guidelines may impact experts’ and novices’ performance, indicate beneficial ways of using them and point out the kind of information and the way of representation that attracts the most attention within a design guideline. The paper concludes that the improvement and development of design guidelines that are intended to support the embodiment design of physical products is needed and proposes to rethink current engineering design guidelines both content-wise and representation-wise.

Success Factors for the Design of Field-level Control Code in Machine and Plant Manufacturing - an Industrial Survey -

“…Table 12). The effectiveness of guidelines was investigated by Reimlinger et al [40], who used differently experienced participants from several countries in a mobile eye-tracking study, finding that novice design engineers perform well by closely interacting with the provided documents.…”

Front-end design prototyping strategies during remote stakeholder engagement

“…In addition, remote stakeholder engagement has become increasingly common, in part due to industry trends toward distributed design teams (Reimlinger et al 2020); a trend which has accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Lund et al 2020). Research has shown that early stage design phases can be among the most negatively affected by remote or distributed design collaboration (Asadi et al 2017), however, and that both stakeholder engagement (Mohedas et al 2020) and virtual prototyping (Deininger et al 2019) are areas where engineering novices may struggle to be effective.…”

“…Research has shown that early stage design phases can be among the most negatively affected by remote or distributed design collaboration (Asadi et al 2017), however, and that both stakeholder engagement (Mohedas et al 2020) and virtual prototyping (Deininger et al 2019) are areas where engineering novices may struggle to be effective. In addition, traditional design guidance may become less relevant in new design contexts, such as remote design (Reimlinger et al 2020).…”

“…Despite the increasing prevalence of remote design work, as well as the unique challenges of, and opportunities for, collaboration by distributed design teams and stakeholders, the theory and practices behind effective remote design processes have not yet been as well-studied as in-person design (Utriainen 2017; Reimlinger et al 2020), especially during the design front-end (Asadi et al 2017). While specific prototyping strategies used by practitioners during stakeholder engagements during the design front-end have been studied (e.g., Coulentianos et al 2020 a ; Rodriguez-Calero et al 2020), it is not known whether and how these practices apply to stakeholder engagement that takes place remotely.…”

“…Explicit, advanced preparation can help students overcome the challenges of remote design quicker and make better use of prescriptive design guidance (Asadi et al 2017). New design education strategies and materials that incorporate the realities of remote design work are needed so that novice engineers can be effective in modern, globalizing design environments (Reimlinger et al 2020).…”