DORA :: Browsing by Author "Eckert, Claudia"

Browsing by Author "Eckert, Claudia"

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Adaptation of sources of inspiration in knitwear design.
(Lawrence Erlbaum Associates / Routledge, 2003-12-01) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
In an experimental study of designing by adaptation, professional and student knitwear designers were videotaped designing sweaters based on a Persian rug or a nineteenth century tapestry. The designers used a range of source-triggered and goal-directed adaptation strategies, to create adaptations ranging from the closest possible translations into the medium to radical transformations of abstract characteristics. While each strategy sometimes led to each type of adaptation, the source-triggered strategies were predominant for the easy-to-adapt source (the rug) and typically led to close adaptations; while the goal-directed strategies were more common for the more difficult source (the tapestry), and more often led to more radical transformations of the source. The professional designers made more use of goal-directed strategies than the student designers. The study supports the view that creative behaviour can usefully be described in terms of consistent patterns resulting from both task demands and from cognitive capacities and learned skills.
Open Access
Against ambiguity
(Springer, 2003-06-01) Stacey, Martin; Eckert, Claudia
This paper argues that the widespread belief that ambiguity is beneficial in design communication stems from conceptual confusion. Communicating imprecise, uncertain and provisional ideas is a vital part of design teamwork, but what is uncertain and provisional needs to be expressed as clearly as possible. Understanding what uncertainty information designers can and should communicate, and how, is an urgent task for research. Viewing design communication as conveying permitted spaces for further designing is a useful rationalisation for understanding what designers need from their notations and computer tools, to achieve clear communication of uncertain ideas. The paper presents a typology of ways that designs can be uncertain. It discusses how sketches and other representations of designs can be both intrinsically ambiguous, and ambiguous or misleading by failing to convey information about uncertainty and provisionality, with reference to knitwear design, where communication using inadequate representations causes severe problems. It concludes that systematic use of meta-notations for conveying provisionality and uncertainty can reduce these problems.
Open Access
Ambiguity is a double-edged sword: Similarity references in communication.
(Design Society, 2003-08-19) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin; Earl, Christopher
Designers often explain new concepts and new ideas by reference to existing designs. This is parsimonious, as it only requires a pointer to the referent and a description of the modifications. Such descriptions can be extremely powerful, expressing the entire context of a design or a process in a few words. However similarity assertions are inherently ambiguous, because they depend not only on the description but also on the intention behind the similarity comparison. In this paper we attempt to analyse the effect that the ambiguity of similarity references has on communication and idea generation in design. The reinterpretation of a similarity assertion can be extremely creative, where ambiguity allows for new interpretations of a problem. At the same time, it can make accurate communication extremely difficult because every assertion can be interpreted differently unless the context is fully shared.
Metadata only
Change as little as possible: Creativity in design by modification.
(Taylor and Francis, 2012) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin; Wyatt, D.; Garthwaite, P.
Open Access
Comparative study of design with application to engineering design.
(Design Society, 2005) Earl, Christopher; Eckert, Claudia; Bucciarelli, Louis; Whitney, Daniel; Knight, Terry; Stacey, Martin; Blackwell, Alan; Macmillan, Sebastian; Clarkson, P. John
A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes.
Embargo
Constraints and Conditions: Drivers for Design Processes
(Springer, 2014) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
Open Access
Design as playing games of make-believe
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-04-01) Poznic, Michael; Stacey, Martin; Hillerbrand, Rafaela; Eckert, Claudia
Designing complex products involves working with uncertainties as the product, the requirements and the environment in which it is used co-evolve, and designers and external stakeholders make decisions that affect the evolving design. Rather than being held back by uncertainty, designers work, cooperate and communicate with each other notwithstanding these uncertainties by making assumptions to carry out their own tasks. To explain this, the paper proposes an adaptation of Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory, to conceptualize designing as playing games of make-believe by inferring what is required and imagining what is possible given the current set of assumptions and decisions, while knowing these are subject to change. What one is allowed and encouraged to imagine, conclude or propose is governed by socially agreed rules and constraints. The paper uses jet engine component design as an example to illustrate how different design teams make assumptions at the beginning of design activities and negotiate what can and cannot be done with the design. This often involves iteration – repeating activities under revised sets of assumptions. As assumptions are collectively revised they become part of a new game of make-believe in the sense that there is social agreement that the decisions constitute part of the constraints that govern what can legitimately be inferred about the design or added to it.
Embargo
Designing the constraints: Creation exercises for framing the design context
(CRC Press / Balkema, 2017) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
Developing an understanding of a design problem by exploring the context in which the new product will be marketed and used is often a crucial part of the design process but has been little studied outside the fashion and textiles industries. A user experience design team in a European car company sought to understand the interests and values of potential Chinese customers by carrying out a co-creation exercise with a set of representative Chinese consumers, in order to understand how to design accessory products and services for them. This paper compares the co-creation exercise, which produced accounts of the consumers’ values in verbal narrative form, to the constraint gathering research phase of artistic design processes, which typically produce sets of constraints, usable design features and desirable emergent properties to express the space of possible designs in visuospatial form as mood boards.
Open Access
Elements of a design method – a basis for describing and evaluating design methods
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-12-05) Gericke, Kilian; Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
Method development is at the heart of design research as methods are a formalised way to express knowledge about how aspects of design could or should be done. However, assuring that methods are in fact used in industry has remained a challenge. Industry will only use methods that they can understand and that they feel will give them benefit reliably. To understand the challenges involved in adopting a method, the method needs to be seen in context: it does not exist in isolation but forms a part of an ecosystem of methods for tackling related design problems. A method depends on the knowledge and skills of the practitioners using it: while a description of a method is an artefact that is a formalisation of engineering knowledge, a method in use constitutes a socio-technical system depending on the interaction of human participants with each other as well as with the description of the method, representations of design information and, often, tools for carrying out the method's tasks. This paper argues that crucial factors in the adoption of methods include how well they are described and how convincingly they are evaluated. The description of a method should cover its core idea, the representations in which design information is described, the procedure to be followed, its intended use, and the tools it uses. The account of a method's intended use should cover its purpose, the situations or product types within its scope, its coverage of kinds of problems within its scope, its expected benefit, and conditions for its use. The different elements need to be evaluated separately as well as the method as an integrated whole. While verification and validation are important for some elements of methods, it is rarely possible to prove the validity of a method. Rather the developers of methods need to gather sufficient evidence that a method will work within a clearly articulated scope. Most design methods do not have binary success criteria, and their usefulness in practice depends as much on simplicity and usability as on the outcomes they produce. Evaluation should focus on how well they work, and how they can be customised and improved.
Metadata only
Formality in design communication
(Cambridge University Press, 2013) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin; Earl, Christopher
Metadata only
From Ronchamp by sledge: On the pragmatics of object references.
(Taylor and Francis (CRC Press), 2009) Stacey, Martin; Eckert, Claudia; Earl, Christopher
References to previous designs and other objects play an important role in the synthesis of new design ideas, but object references are used for a wide variety of other purposes in design thinking. This study reports on the roles that object references played in design meetings in projects developing two very different products: a crematorium, and a hand-held device with a thermal print head for drawing on heat-sensitive paper. These roles depended on the moment-to-moment needs of the participants in the meetings, which varied rapidly within meetings, and which were determined largely by the type of product and the state of the project. Almost all the references used were concise identifiers of concepts or features, or exemplars of categories.
Open Access
Knitwear customisation as repeated redesign.
(Technical University of Munich, 2003-10-06) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
Producing large numbers of garment variants will only be economically viable if it requires very little human effort. But garment customisation cannot always be fully automated. Applying grading rules maintain the same details but sometimes achieves a different overall effect; but the customer expects the same overall effect and is less concerned about details. Choosing between alternative customisations requires a human designer's trained perceptual judgement. Therefore a viable mass customisation support system must support the repeated redesign of a garment by combining automatic design with fast human editing. Evaluating and modifying the suggestions of others is a natural and efficient activity for designers. This paper describes two prototype automatic design systems exploring techniques that could be used for mass customisation of knitted garments - in which the shape and patterns are indivisibly linked. An early pattern placing system that automatically altered both shape and pattern parameters in a variety of alternative ways. A shape design system that generates technically correct and consistent garment shapes from a set of measurements and a verbal description; it works independently of sizes, recalculating the shape for each new set of measurements. Starting from the system's suggestions, designers can very quickly tweak the new design to fulfil their aesthetic intentions.
Open Access
The lure of the measurable in design research.
(Design Society, 2004) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin; Clarkson, P. John
Beginning design research projects by defining success criteria, judged by numerical measurements, is a very attractive idea. But defining a priori success criteria is problematic, as is using numerical metrics to assess the success of a new method or computer tool. The paper points out some pitfalls of using metrics for success. It argues from experience of studying design processes that projects should begin with objectives derived from research questions, but these objectives should be revised as needs and opportunities emerge. Success criteria for of new methods and tools should be derived later from a detailed specification of requirements. Researchers should aim first for understanding their effects, and derive evaluations from that.
Open Access
A Methodology for comparing design processes.
(Design Society, 2003-08-19) Stacey, Martin; Earl, Christopher; Eckert, Claudia; O'Donovan, Brendan
We gain insights into design processes by recognising similarities to other processes, often in radically different industries. The crucial determinants of what happens are characteristics shared with some other design processes. But there is no way to draw on comparisons beyond one's own experience. We are developing a programme of comparative design research that aims to map the similarities and differences between design processes, and develop a deeper understanding of how and why design is done differently in different industries, and how effective practices can be transferred between industries. In this paper we outline a methodology for creating analyses of design processes that facilitates both cross-process comparisons and the integration of different analytical perspectives on design. The analyst draws on a catalogue of previous design process descriptions for useful concepts, to map processes as a network of participants and activities and the relationships between them, and describe the causal relationships between the properties of the participants, activities and relationships.
Open Access
Objects as Carriers of Engineering Knowledge
(Taylor and Francis, 2022-09-23) Stacey, Martin; Eckert, Claudia
The role of previous products in evolutionary engineering design is often neglected. In design discourse, references to objects provide terse expressions of complex information that cannot easily be expressed otherwise. Previous artifacts serve in conjunction with more general engineering knowledge to enable designers and design teams in engineering companies to work in ways that would be very difficult or impossible without them. They trigger the retrieval and active construction of personal knowledge, but also provide a scaffold for sharing knowledge and using it collectively. For companies, their products encapsulate and carry a significant part of the collective knowledge of the organization.
Open Access
Overconstrained and underconstrained creativity: Changing the rhetoric to negotiate the boundaries of design
(Springer, 2021-03-01) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
What people think creativity is and what constitutes designing influences how designing is organized and carried out, and how design colleagues interact. In contrast to engineering, the fashion industry sees design as the process from idea to specification carried out by designers, and creativity only as open-ended and unconstrained. This reflects widespread beliefs about creativity and rhetoric about design. In knitwear, much detailed design is done by technicians converting these specifications into a program for knitting a garment. This often requires creative problem solving in finding a way to realise an idea or in optimising production without compromising the aesthetic appearance. Knitwear designers and technicians seldom co-design, but only a collaboration between designers and technicians can lead to an exploitation of the full potential of modern production machinery. This observation has implications for interactions between artistic and technical designers in a variety of other industries.
Embargo
Past Designs as Repositories of Tacit Collective Knowledge
(Springer, 2022) Addis, Mark; Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin
As most engineering design proceeds by modifying past designs and reusing and adapting existing components and solution principles, a significant part of the knowledge engineers employ in design is encapsulated in the past designs they are familiar with. References to past designs, as well as encounters with them, serve to invoke the knowledge associated with them and constructed from them. This paper argues that much of this knowledge is tacit consisting in and/or made available by the perceptual recognition of features and situations, using a discussion of design margins to illustrate how engineers use tacit knowledge in reasoning about the properties of new designs.
Open Access
Process Models: Plans, Predictions, Proclamations or Prophecies?
(Springer, 2019-09-24) Stacey, Martin; Eckert, Claudia; Hillerbrand, Rafaela
Design process models have a complex and changing relationship to the processes they model, and mean different things to different people in different situations. Participants in design processes need to understand each other’s perspectives and agree on what the models mean. The paper draws on philosophy of science to argue that understanding a design process model can be seen as an imagination game governed by agreed rules, to envisage what would be true about the world if the model were correct. The rules depend on the syntax and content of the model, on the task the model is used for, and on what the users see the model as being. The paper outlines twelve alternative conceptualizations of design process models – frames, pathways, positions, proclamations, projections, predictions, propositions, prophecies, requests, demands, proposals, promises – and discusses when they fit situations that stakeholders in design processes can be in. Articulating how process models are conceptualized can both help understand how process management works and help resolve communication problems in industrial practice.
Open Access
References to past designs.
(Key Centre for Design Computing and Cognition, University of Sydney, 2005) Eckert, Claudia; Stacey, Martin; Earl, Christopher
Designing by adaptation is almost invariably a dominant feature of designing, and references to past designs are ubiquitous in design discourse. Object references serve as indices into designers' stocks of design concepts, in which memories for concrete embodiments and exemplars are tightly bound to solution principles. Thinking and talking by reference to past designs serves as a way to reduce the overwhelming complexity of complex design tasks by enabling designers to use parsimonious mental representations to which details can be added as needed. However object references can be ambiguous, and import more of the past design than is intended or may be desirable.
Metadata only
Reshaping the box: creative designing as constraint satisfaction.
(Inderscience, 2010-08-01) Stacey, Martin; Eckert, Claudia
The nature of novel idea creation in design depends on the nature of the design challenge: how requirements and constraints not only determine what is acceptable but shape thinking. This paper explores how overconstrained and underconstrained problems are tackled in fundamentally different ways, using engineering design, knitwear design and software development as exemplars. Problem framing as well as the iterative reformulation of the design problem is crucial in all fields but is done very differently. However, designers face a variety of types of problem, including problems resembling those typical in other industries; this paper argues that a wider awareness of the creative thinking methods used in other industries would aid designers in many fields to tackle unfamiliar problems.

Browsing by Author "Eckert, Claudia"

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