Toward theory of group design activities: emphasizing engineering design

Abstract

To provide a theoretical perspective for group design, the domain of aircraft design practiced by human beings was explored. An experimental observation of aircraft design to see how human designers perform design activity is presented. To match design tools to actual requirements rather than intuitions group design activity was analyzed and support tools were developed to meet the requirements that were identified. The analysis emphasized cooperative conflict resolution and replanning because these are essential to solving system-level problems. The experimental analysis, the emerging theory, and the system being developed based on the theoretical results are outlined.<>