WHAT'S THE BENEFIT OF PROBLEM EXPLORATION?
DS 84: Proceedings of the DESIGN 2016 14th International Design Conference
Year: 2016
Editor: Marjanovic Dorian, Storga Mario, Pavkovic Neven, Bojcetic Nenad, Skec Stanko
Author: Vasconcelos, L. A.; Crilly, N.; Chen, C.-C.; Campos, F.; Kelner, J.
Series: DESIGN
Section: DESIGN THEORY AND RESEARCH METHODS
Page(s): 89-98
Abstract
Models of the design process often start with activities of problem exploration before generating ideas, but the benefits of exploration have not been properly investigated. We did an experiment with undergraduate industrial designers during a design course. Except for the exploration methods, all teams had to follow the same design process. We observed that exploration methods increased the design teams’ perceived knowledge about the problem, but no impact on the quality of their final designs was seen. This challenges a widely held assumption about the value of problem exploration in design.
Keywords: problem exploration, conceptual design, industrial design, design process, design methodology