Title: An empirical study of engineering knowledge dynamics in a design situation

Authors: Guy Prudhomme, Franck Pourroy, Kristine Lund

Addresses: G-SCOP Laboratory, INPGrenoble, UJF, CNRS, 46 avenue Felix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble Cedex, France. ' G-SCOP Laboratory, INPGrenoble, UJF, CNRS, 46 avenue Felix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble Cedex, France. ' ICAR (Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissage, Representations) Laboratory, CNRS, University of Lyon, Lyon, France

Abstract: After presenting our empirical research framework (the COSMOCE Project, which focused on collaborative and synchronous design activities), we explain why knowledge dynamics is a matter of interest for understanding and modelling the product design process and rationale. The assumption is made that an argumentative situation – typical of product design – is a good means to study knowledge dynamics with regard to the design problem (requirements definition) and the solution. A theoretical framework incorporating our point of view on the concepts of knowledge, collaborative design and argumentation is presented, to justify the design experiment situation we constructed. The empirical study that was carried out is then presented with a description of the situation through the proposed task, the participants, the tools they used, the steps they took, the instructions given to them, the resources put at their disposal and the deliverables expected from them. The collected data are described and some examples are given. Finally, we describe our analysis method and present some results related to knowledge dynamics.

Keywords: argumentation; collaborative design; design experiments; knowledge dynamics; engineering knowledge; synchronous design; modelling; product design; distributed design; distant design; concurrent engineering.

DOI: 10.1504/JDR.2007.016388

Journal of Design Research, 2007 Vol.6 No.3, pp.333 - 358

Published online: 23 Dec 2007 *

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