It is common for a design team to be handed a problem to solve for others. The handing over is normally referred to as a ‘briefing’ process, and the documentation of the starting point and what is to be done is known as a ‘brief’. It is known that the way we frame and understand a problem influences what paths we see to potential solutions. The aim of this thesis is to understand what makes a good design brief and to do so in order to create an empirically informed, and theoretically underpinned, typology of design briefs and the kind of search processes they are disposed to induce. Different bodies of literature have tried to grasp how design solves problems in order to understand designer’s behavior and ultimately facilitate or improve it. Distinctions can, and have been made, between different kinds of problem formulations, as well as different problem-solving approaches. This thesis aims to integrate two previously distinct literatures, search process from the organizational perspective developed by James G. March, Herbert A. Simon, Richard Cyert and others and Design and the Design Process from the perspectives of authors such as Donald Schön, Kees Dorst and Nigel Cross among others, to propose a typology of design briefs in order to ultimately facilitate problem formulation and subsequently facilitate the design process. The simple and immediate answer to the question of what makes a good design brief is: ‘that depends’. It depends on the design process to be followed (if there is one), it depends on the kind of goals that should be achieved, the time available, and it also depends on how much and what is known about the problem and potential solutions. Based on this, four ideal types of design briefs are articulated, including the expected associated search behavior and challenges of design teams. Det är vanligt att ett designteam får ett problem att lösa åt andra. Överlämnandet kallas normalt en ”briefing” -process och dokumentationen av utgångspunkten och vad som ska göras kallas ett ”design brief ”. Det är känt att det sätt vi ramar in och förstår ett problem påverkar vilka vägar vi ser till potentiella lösningar. Syftet med denna avhandling är att förstå vad som gör ett bra ”design brief ” och att göra det för att skapa en empiriskt informerad och teoretiskt underbyggd typologi av design brief och vilken typ av sökprocesser de uppmuntrar. Olika litteratur har försökt förstå hur design löser problem för att förstå designerns beteende och i slutändan underlätta eller förbättra det. Skillnader kan och har gjorts mellan olika typer av problemformuleringar och olika problemlösningsmetoder. Denna avhandling syftar till att integrera två tidigare distinkta litteraturområden, sökprocess ur det organisatoriska perspektivet som utvecklats av James G. March, Herbert A. Simon, Richard Cyert och andra samt Design och designprocessen ur perspektiv av författare som Donald Schön, Kees Dorst och Nigel Cross bland andra för att föreslå en typologi av design brief för att underlätta problemformulering och därmed också underlätta designprocessen. Det enkla och omedelbara svaret på frågan om vad som gör ett bra design brief är: ”det beror på”. Det beror på designprocessen som ska följas (om det finns en), det beror på vilken typ av mål som ska uppnås, den tillgängliga tiden, och det beror också på hur mycket och vad som är känt om problemet och potentiella lösningar. Baserat på detta artikuleras fyra idealtyper av design brief, inklusive det förväntade associerade sökbeteendet och utmaningar för designteam.

Public policy can be considered a design science. It involves identifying relevant problems, selecting instruments to address the problem, developing institutions for managing the intervention, and creating means of assessing the design. Policy design has become an increasingly challenging task, given the emergence of numerous ‘wicked’ and complex problems. Much of policy design has adopted a technocratic and engineering approach, but there is an emerging literature that builds on a more collaborative and prospective approach to design. This book will discuss these issues in policy design and present alternative approaches to design.

In a world permeated by digital technology, engineering is involved in every aspect of human life. Engineers address a wider range of design problems than ever before, raising new questions and challenges regarding their work, as boundaries between engineering, management, politics, education and art disappear in the face of comprehensive socio-technical systems. It is therefore necessary to review our understanding of engineering practice, expertise and responsibility. This book advances the idea that the future of engineering will not be driven by a static view of a closed discipline, but rather will result from a continuous dialogue between different stakeholders involved in the design and application of technical artefacts. Based on papers presented at the 2016 conference of the forum for Philosophy, Engineering and Technology (fPET) in Nuremberg, Germany, the book features contributions by philosophers, engineers and managers from academia and industry, who discuss current and upcoming issues in engineering from a wide variety of different perspectives. They cover topics such as problem solving strategies and value-sensitive design, experimentation and simulation, engineering knowledge and education, interdisciplinary collaboration, sustainability, risk and privacy. The different contributions in combination draw a comprehensive picture of efforts worldwide to come to terms with engineering, its foundations in philosophy, the ethical problems it causes, and its effect on the ongoing development of society.

'Educating Engineers' documents a range of solutions to the dilemmas facing the field of educating engineers across all areas.

This book celebrates the life, work and influence of Professor Roger W.H. Sargent of Imperial College London. It does so through a range of original contributions that span the wide academic and industry interests of Professor Sargent. Roger Sargent passed away in late 2018, but his legacy lives on through his enormous academic tree, which traces to the early 1960s. That huge body of work has also had significant impacts on industrial practices. Roger was regarded as “the father of Process Systems Engineering (PSE)”. This area of Chemical Engineering continues to influence the modelling, design, control, optimization and integrated performance of industrial and related processes. This book highlights some of those impacts and the ongoing importance of PSE in helping to solve some of the grand challenges of our time.

Design is believed to be one of the most interesting and challenging problem-solving activities ever facing artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Knowledge-based systems using rule-based and model-based reasoning techniques have been applied to build design automation and/or design decision support systems. Although such systems have met with some success, difficulties have been encountered in terms of formalizing such generalized design experiences as rules, logic, and domain models. Recently, researchers have been exploring the idea of using case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques to complement or replace other approaches to design support. CBR can be considered as an alternative to paradigms such as rule-based and model-based reasoning. Rule-based expert systems capture knowledge in the form of if-then rules which are usually identified by a domain expert. Model-based reasoning aims at formulating knowledge in the form of principles to cover the various aspects of a problem domain. These principles, which are more general than if-then rules, comprise a model which an expert system may use to solve problems. Model-based reasoning (MBR) is sometimes called reasoning from first principles. Instead of generalizing knowledge into rules or models, CBR is an experience-based method. Thus, specific cases, corresponding to prior problem-solving experiences, comprise the main knowledge sources in a CBR system. This volume includes a collection of chapters that describe specific projects in which case-based reasoning is the focus for the representation and reasoning in a particular design domain. The chapters provide a broad spectrum of applications and issues in applying and extending the concept of CBR to design. Each chapter provides its own introduction to CBR concepts and principles.