Novice Designers’ Approaches to Justifying User Requirements and Engineering Specifications

Abstract

User requirements and engineering specifications represent important criteria that engineering designers use to define their design problems and evaluate the suitability of their solution concepts. Novice designers frequently develop user requirements and engineering specifications as part of curricular design projects; however, few studies have explored how novice designers justify the user requirements and engineering specifications that they develop. This preliminary study analyzed the design reports of capstone design teams to determine how novice designer participants justified their user requirements and engineering specifications. Teams frequently used “Sponsor interactions” and “Perceptions of user needs” as justifications for user requirements but gathered limited data directly from users. As such, the user requirements developed by teams may have been based on team assumptions rather than actual user needs. Teams frequently used “Sponsor interactions,” “Technical research,” and “Prior work” as justifications for engineering specifications. However, teams also developed several engineering specifications without clear justifications. Our findings suggest that as novice designers develop their design skills, they may need scaffolding and support tools to guide the development of user requirements and engineering specifications that accurately reflect user needs.

The use of recommended interviewing practices by novice engineering designers to elicit information during requirements development

“…Studies have shown that novice designers may also encounter broader difficulties related to gathering and applying information from stakeholders to inform their requirements development and/or solution development processes (Sugar 2001; Mohedas et al 2014, 2020; Conradie, De Marez & Saldien 2017; Loweth et al 2019, 2020 b ). For example, Mohedas et al (2014), in their study of capstone design students’ use of design ethnography, found that participants struggled to identify stakeholders who could provide needed design information.…”

Origins of Requirement Development Skills in Engineering Undergraduates: Students’ Initial Thinking and Use in Engineering Decisions

“…Even when novice designers carry out framing activities, like research, they still may have an underdeveloped understanding of the problem and a lack of justification for their framing. In analyzing the reports of capstone design teams to understand the development and justification of user requirements and engineering specifications, Loweth et al [23] found that students' sources of information for user needs were often limited to interactions with sponsors and their own perceptions of user needs. Further, their engineering specifications were frequently derived from sponsor interaction, technical benchmarking, and prior work, and in some cases, specifications lacked a clear justification.…”