Economic development as design: Insight and guidance through the PSI framework

Economic development is aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world, and needs to be carried out with design at its heart, but this has often not been the case. This paper first reviews dominant approaches to economic development including the use of subsidies or the creation of markets and demand and the testing of initiatives using randomized control trials. It then introduces ‘development engineering’ as a representative engineering design approach to engineering and technology in development before presenting the view that successful development needs to involve continual learning through innovation in context. The PSI (problem social institutional) framework is presented as a basis for guiding such development as a design activity, and its application is illustrated using examples from India of the unsuccessful introduction of new cooking stoves and then both successful and unsuccessful approaches to rural electrification. A 2-level approach to PSI is taken, in which the lower level represents daily operation of communities and the 2nd level represents the development project including addressing misalignments between the different PSI spaces and levels

Perspectives on innovation: The role of engineering design

The aim of the paper is to foster a discussion in the engineering design community about its understanding of the innovation phenomena and the unique contribution that comes from engineering design. The paper reports on the dialouge originating from a series of workshops with participants from different backgrounds in engineering design, systems engineering, industrial design psychology and business. Definitions of innovation are revisited as used in business, management and engineering design contexts. The role of innovation is then discussed related to product development from (i) the management perspective, (ii) a systems architecture perspective and (iii) in relation to sustainable development as one driver of innovation. It is argued that engineering design has a central role in how to realise the novelty aspect of innovation and often plays a critical role in maturing these into the valuable products, and there is a need to articulate the role of engineering design in innovation to better resonate with the business and management research

Measuring The Value Of Knowledge

The quality of knowledge a system has substantiallyinfluences its performance. Often, the terms knowledge, its quality, and how it is measured or valuated, are left vague enough to accommodate several ad hoc interpretations. This paper articulates two definitions of knowledge and their associated value measures. The paper focuses on the theory underlying measurements and its application to knowledge valuation; it stresses the issue of constructing meaningful measures rather than discussingsome of the desirable properties of measures (e.g., reliability or validity). A detailed example of knowledge valuation using the measures is described. The example demonstrates the importance for system understanding and the difficulty of valuating knowledge. It shows the importance of employing several different measures simultaneously for a single valuation. The paper concludes by discussing the scope of and relationships between the measures. 1 INTRODUCTION In a world with information highways, ..

A Model of Aesthetic Judgment in Design

Aesthetics plays a major role in real design. To date, aesthetics is mostly ignored in studies dealing with computational design support systems. Probably, the main reason for this omission is that aesthetics is tightly associated with art which is perceived to be beyond the capabilities of computational techniques. The paper outlines a model for the incorporation of aesthetic judgment in design. It shows how important aesthetic criteria that follow the rationalistic and the romanticist movements of aesthetics, can be represented, refined, and used in design. Bridger, a system that assists in the preliminary design of cable-stayed bridges, implements a preliminary version of this model. Several examples of designs generated by Bridger are discussed for demonstrating the scope and potential of the model. The most significant investigations in bridge aesthetics deal primarily with fundamental philosophical and psychological problems or direct aesthetic analysis of existing bridges, prov..

Design Knowledge Acquisition: Task Analysis and a Partial Implementation

: Design is conceptualized as an ill-structured process that requires diverse knowledge that is hard to acquire. Systematic analysis of design and the knowledge requirements is has in general and in the context of bridge design shows that the knowledge needed can be semi-automatically acquired by using machine learning techniques. Although there are limitations to the approach, preliminary results in the bridge design domain are promising and can potentially transfer to other design domains. 1 INTRODUCTION The process of knowledge acquisition for any type of expert system is time-consuming and tedious. This effort increases when dealing with design domains that are ill-structured by their nature. One approach that promises to alleviate the difficulty of the knowledge acquisition process is the introduction of learning into system development and maintenance stages (Reich and Fenves, 1989b; Shalin et al., 1988; Witten and MacDonald, 1988). For tasks that are relatively well understood ..

Annotated Bibliography on Research Methodologies

This paper suggests that science is organized in research programmes: a structure including a hard core that is not questioned and auxiliary hypotheses that guard it from negative evidence. Acknowledging that no data can confirm or refute a theory, scientists should adhere to some normative rules when revising auxiliary hypotheses. (Habermas, 1971) This book provides a critique of positivism through a study of the historical development of ideas that led to contemporary positivism. The book does not argue against science, but against "scientism:" The view that equates all knowledge with science. (Toulmin, 1972) This book argues for the necessity to bring philosophy and science together for a reappraisal of epistemology and methodology. Philosophy is to be a historical, empirical, and pragmatic enterprise that should focus on issues such as conceptual change in the sciences and human thought. (Weimer, 1979) This book develops a meta-theory of science in which positivism and logical empiricism and called justificationism and opinions such as those of Popper and Kuhn are termed non-justificationism. The book criticizes justificationist theories of science and uses the metatheory to explain the differences between positions of different contemporary non-justificatinists positions. (Knorr-Cetina, 1981) This book provides a constructivist view of science. It uses several metaphors of a scientist to study the way in which social processes make up for the lack of any rational way for advancing science. (Bunge, 1983) A part of an eight-book treatise on philosophy, this book provides a systems science perspective on epistemology and research methodology. It presents a serious study of scientific realism

Learning in design: From Characterizing Dimensions to Working Systems

: The application of machine learning (ML) to solve practical problems is complex. Only recently, due to the increased promise of ML in solving real problems and the experienced difficulty of their use, has this issue started to attract attention. This difficulty arises from the complexity of learning problems and the large variety of available techniques. In order to understand this complexity and begin to overcome it, it is important to construct a characterization of learning situations. Building on previous work that dealt with the practical use of ML, a set of dimensions is developed, contrasted with another recent proposal, and illustrated with a project on the development of a decision-support system for marine propeller design. The general research opportunities that emerge from the development of the dimensions are discussed. Leading toward working systems, a simple model is presented for setting priorities in research and in selecting learning tasks within large projects. Cen..

Layered Models of Research Methodologies

The status of research methodology employed by studies on the application of AI techniques to solving problems in engineering design, analysis, and manufacturing is poor. There may be many reasons for this status including: unfortunate heritage from AI, poor educational system, and researchers' sloppiness. Understanding this status is a prerequisite for improvement. The study of research methodology can promote such understanding, but most importantly, it can assist in improving the situation. This paper introduces concepts from the philosophy of science and builds on them models of worldviews of science. These worldviews are combined with a research heuristics or research perspectives and criteria for evaluating research to create a layered model of research methodology. This layerd model can serve to organize and facilitate a better understanding of future studies of research methodologies. The paper discusses many of the issues involved in the study of AI and AIEDAM research methodo..