Understanding how the information requests of aerospace engineering designers influence information-seeking behaviour

Aurisicchio, Marco; Bracewell, Rob H.; Wallace, KM

doi:10.1080/09544820902877583

Cited by 37 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Court et al (1996) reported that 36% of information was accessed through a person based on in their study in seven UK engineering companies in different domains; Marsh (1997) found that 90% of information was accessed through a person based on his study in a major aerospace engineering company. An explanation for the prevalence of using social sources is that people can translate their knowledge and apply it to a new context through reasoning processes (Aurisicchio et al 2010). In addition, people can provide a rationale of past solutions (Bracewell et al 1999)-a need identified as one of the most significant information needs in engineering companies (Heisig et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tapping into past design experiences: knowledge sharing and creation during novice–expert design consultations

et al. 2011

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Designing is a knowledge-intensive activity. For novice design engineers, an important means of acquiring knowledge is to consult experienced colleagues. We observed novice-expert consultations as part of three engineering projects in a large aerospace company. Seven meetings were analysed in detail regarding the design activity, the content, and the form of interaction. Although the meetings were initiated for the purpose of information seeking, this process amounted to only 8% of the time compared to knowledge creation between novices and experts (47% of meeting time), and contextual information sharing (45% of meeting time). Both experts and novices were found to contribute equally and interactively to the discussion and analysis of solutions. The analysis showed how the processes alternated in the meetings. We identified tentative patterns on how these consultation processes change over the course of the design process phases. The micro-level analysis of the design activities and form of interaction provided a deeper understanding of how the consultation processes are discursively produced by the experts and novices. Finally, implications for design engineering practitioners are derived and suggestions for further research are provided.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tapping into past design experiences: knowledge sharing and creation during novice–expert design consultations

et al. 2011

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this respect one aspect stands out as particularly apt for this type of analysis given the conceptual framework and the design research context. Namely, information acquisition commonly referred to as information seeking in the design domain (Aurisicchio et al, 2010, Kwasitsu, 2004.Not only does this aspect of design work play a key role in individual design activity (the focus of this comparison) (Reed et al, 2011, King et al, 1994, Robinson, 2010 it builds on a well--established body of work - both manifest and latent - in the design field. In this sense information seeking provides 16 the ideal focus for a comparison of manifest and latent approaches as it combines relevance to the design domain whilst also being grounded in substantive theory -allowing findings from the comparison to be generalised to the wider design context.…”

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confidence: 99%

Investigating design: A comparison of manifest and latent approaches

Cash

Snider

2014

Design Studies

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Please cite only the published version using the reference above.See http://opus.bath.ac.uk/ for usage policies.Please scroll down to view the document. AbstractThis paper contributes to the on--going focus on improving design research methods, by exploring and synthesising two key interrelated research approaches -manifest and latent. These approaches are widely used individually in design research, however, this paper represents the first work bringing them together and explicitly investigating their complementarity in the design domain. This is realised using an example artificial observation study. In addition to discussing underlying relationships between the approaches, this paper identifies key opportunities for improving design research methods by more explicitly combining both manifest and latent elements. Finally, a number of combinatory approaches are proposed based on a conceptual framework. Keywords:Research methods, design research, design science, latent and manifest approaches 2The designer has formed the focus of a significant amount of design research over the last decades (Cross, 2007, Frankenberger et al., 1998. In order to fully explore this focus researchers have adopted a wide range of perspectives, from the physical activities of designers (Robinson, 2010, Lindahl, 2006 to investigations of their cognitive processes (Kavakli and Gero, 2002, Dong, 2005); a result of which has been the adoption of both manifest (explicit) and latent (implicit) approaches.Despite this difference, manifest and latent approaches are fundamentally linked, and have been compared and integrated in a range of fields in order to improve both quantitative and qualitative research (Neuendorf, 2002, Hair et al., 1998, Mayring, 2000, Potter and Levine Donnerstein, 1999.One example where the combination of these two perspectives has led to greater insight in the context of design is that of the on--going investigation of novice and expert designers. Consider, for example, the work of Ahmed et al. (2003) who highlight the differing mental processes used by experienced and novice designers. Here, a latent approach has been used to reason about what the recorded variables mean in the context of the design process used by the designers and thus differentiate them. In contrast, Cash et al. (2013) compare a number of manifest variables associated with design activity -revealing substantial similarity between expert and novice participants. These two works can be synthesised to give a significantly more nuanced understanding of the subject. For example, the baseline elements of the design activity (e.g. information exchange) are almost indistinguishable between experts and novices, yet significant differences remain in both the latent interpretation of a more sophisticated design process and the manifest metric of raw numbers of ideas. In other words, both approaches give complementary yet distinct information, combining to reveal new insight.Manifest and latent approaches are well established -as exemplified above -and f...

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“…Elaborating these for the engineering design domain based on the work of Wasiak et al (2010) and others results in the following: Recognizing is a prerequisite for the information seeking activity itself and, therefore, is excluded from this study (although it could be incorporated in a broader investigation). Finding information is characterised as both seeking and requesting (based on Aurisicchio et al (2010)) while seeking is decomposed into finding source and finding within source based on Robinson (2010). Finally, Borlund (2003) highlights that when analysing information seeking activity it is advantageous to associate sources with the underlying need rather than the query.…”

Section: Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using visual information analysis to explore complex patterns in the activity of designers

2014

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Understanding how the information requests of aerospace engineering designers influence information-seeking behaviour

Cited by 37 publications

References 25 publications

Tapping into past design experiences: knowledge sharing and creation during novice–expert design consultations

Tapping into past design experiences: knowledge sharing and creation during novice–expert design consultations

Investigating design: A comparison of manifest and latent approaches

Using visual information analysis to explore complex patterns in the activity of designers

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