The Engineering Design Discipline: Is its Confounding Lexicon Hindering its Evolution?

In this paper, we invite the engineering design research community to examine the current state of the engineering design lexicon. We expose the nature and the persuasiveness of practices that may hinder intelligible discourse within the engineering design literature. In particular, we show how such commonly used terms as criterion and metric are used sometimes as synonyms and sometimes not, often leading to material miscommunications. In our view, the engineering design discipline has reached a point in its evolution where clarity and conciseness of its lexicon should be a priority. Today’s design activity takes place in a truly multidisciplinary environment, which often involves engineers of divers backgrounds. Written and oral design discourse among design researchers does not rely on a generally accepted and documented lexicon. These situations are symptomatic of a communication infrastructure that is not effectively facilitating the vigorous evolution of the engineering design discipline of recent years. In addition to detailing the outlines of the design lexicon deficiency, we also propose some avenues to a constructive and productive community-wide discussion on this subject, including conducting open discussions at the web site: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/Research/DBD. We hope that this effort will be a catalyst for the development of an engineering design dictionary that will enjoy broad acceptance within the design community. A developed design lexicon will form a critical foundational component of Decision-Based-Design, the central topic of this special issue.

[1]  J. G. Miller.  Living systems. , 1972, Currents in modern biology.

[2]  James N. Siddall,et al.  Analytical decision-making in engineering design , 1972 .

[3]  L. Zadeh.  Fuzzy sets as a basis for a theory of possibility , 1999 .

[4]  J. Neumann,et al.  Theory of games and economic behavior , 1945, 100 Years of Math Milestones.

[5]  David G. Ullman,et al.  A taxonomy for mechanical design , 1992 .

[6]  Deborah L Thurston,et al.  Fuzzy Ratings and Utility Analysis in Preliminary Design Evaluation of Multiple Attributes , 1992 .

[7]  E. Rowland.  Theory of Games and Economic Behavior , 1946, Nature.

[8]  Thomas J. Creswell,et al.  The usage panel in The American heritage dictionary, second college edition , 1986 .

[9]  Deborah L Thurston,et al.  A formal method for subjective design evaluation with multiple attributes , 1991 .

[10]  John R. Dixon,et al.  A review of research in mechanical engineering design. Part II: Representations, analysis, and design for the life cycle , 1989 .

[11]  Erik K. Antonsson,et al.  Imprecision in Engineering Design , 1995 .

[12]  John R. Dixon,et al.  A review of research in mechanical engineering design. Part I: Descriptive, prescriptive, and computer-based models of design processes , 1989 .

[13]  Jetta Carol Culpepper,et al.  Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology , 2000 .

[14]  田口 玄一,et al.  Taguchi on robust technology development : bringing quality engineering upstream , 1993 .

[15]  Achille Messac,et al.  Physical programming - Effective optimization for computational design , 1996 .

[16]  D. Pearce.  The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics , 1981 .

[17]  Kristin L. Wood,et al.  Computations with Imprecise Parameters in Engineering Design: Background and Theory , 1989 .

[18]  Akira Kobayashi.  International Institution for Production Engineering Research , 1970 .

[19]  Achille Messac,et al.  From the dubious art of constructing objective functions to the application of physical programming , 1996 .

[20]  E. Antonsson,et al.  Engineering design calculations with fuzzy parameters , 1992 .

[21]  G. Hazelrigg.  Systems Engineering: An Approach to Information-Based Design , 1996 .