What Does it Mean to Design? A Qualitative Investigation of Design Professionals' Experiences

Abstract

Background Design is essential to the engineering profession and plays a crucial role in preparation for future practice. Research investigating variations of how professional designers experience, give meaning to, and approach design can inform the ways we characterize, assess, and facilitate design learning. This may also have significant implications for preparing future engineering professionals to collaborate within and across disciplines. Purpose (Hypothesis) The goal of the study was to reveal and investigate critical differences in how designers from within and outside of engineering disciplines understand what it means to design, and how those understandings are evident in their approaches to and progression through design work. Design/Method A qualitative research approach called phenomenography was used to investigate critical variations in how individuals experience and understand design. Twenty practicing designers were interviewed regarding their design experiences, how they approach design, and the ways they understand design. Conclusions Six qualitatively distinct lenses on how individuals across disciplines experience and come to understand design emerged, comprising a phenomenographic “outcome space.” These include design as (1) evidencebased decision‐making, (2) organized translation, (3) personal synthesis, (4) intentional progression, (5) directed creative exploration, and (6) freedom. Theoretical implications include an understanding of how design skills and knowledge come together to form a design approach, while practical implications emphasize structuring variation‐based reflection, which can facilitate common ground as a result of recognizing differ “design lenses.”

Noticing, Assessing, and Responding to Students' Engineering: Exploring a Responsive Teaching Approach to Engineering Design

“…Because design is a social process influenced by many cues from the local context, different engineering designers with similar expertise may approach the same design problem in a variety of ways 30 . Yet looking at the design practice literature as a whole, we see that engineers increasingly make well-informed design decisions at all stages of their design processes as they gain more experience 6,7,31,32 .…”

Teaching as a Design Process: A Framework for Design-based Research in Engineering Education

“…Design has been used in engineering education primarily from the point of view of developing students' abilities as designers and considering their use of design processes in learning to be engineers 7 or from the perspective of design professionals 8 . We use "design research" in this context to mean not the study of design professionals or investigating students' design process, but rather as a theoretical and methodological framework for education research 4,5,[9][10][11][12] .…”

“…These phases emerged as names for the process as experienced by the group leaders and were named as such as substantive categories that reflect the beliefs and understandings of the participants in the project 35 . While design is a more complex process than what is captured by these three overarching phases, the design process often includes at least these three with differences and interpretations that may vary by context 8 . Planning, in our case includes how instructors consider the content, pedagogy, constraints, students' needs, and their objectives for the class.…”

WORK IN PROGRESS: Design, Creativity, and Creativity Techniques: Finding, Encouraging, and Developing the 'Voice of the Designer'

“…Design Related Content Slow-looking, the approach discussed in the example above, uses the study of works of art to help design students observe carefully and gather information on what they are observing deliberately, valuable techniques to practicing engineers 8 and also expert designers 2 . The slowlooking approach was initially applied to artwork but was later applied to architecture, engineered products, and finally students were asked to apply it to a design of their choosing with tremendous results.…”

“…When approaching engineering design problems, professional and expert practitioners value careful problem definition and information gathering, personal synthesis of that information based on previous experiences, and adaptable creative exploration 2,8 . However, these elements are absent or only lightly considered by traditional design approaches 15 .…”