My research investigates the relationship between the architectural designer and the use that he or she makes of digital media as part of the design process. My principal research question is: what is the advantage of including digital media as part of the designers' 'toolset' in the early stages of design? The context is a highly successful and high profile mid-sized Australian architectural practice. The study considers the nature of architectural designing as a creative activity and the extent to which advantages could be gained by including digital media as part of the designers' toolset in the early stages of design. Designers seem to be polarised between championing the role of digital media as part of their design processes and downright rejecting it. One such extreme position is a view that this media has either 'no place' (Martens et al. 2007:np; Sanders 1996:4-5) within architectural design and is thus seen as 'just another tool' filling at best an ancillary and service role in the design process (Kvan, Mark et al. 2004:np). This view suggests therefore that designing with digital media has hardly advanced (Corrigan 2003:86). An opposing view is that digital media can take a more fundamental place to advance design methods (Rahim 2006:1), even revolutionarily improve the design process beyond 'question and debate' (Winner 1986:6 in Steele 2001:13), resulting in a 'new architecture' (Lindsey 2001:12) and encouraging significant change in designing through semi-automated generation of design and interconnected ways of communicating (Lindsey 2001:12). Resulting from my study, I have found, however, that the more negative views (Winner 1986:6; Sanders 1996:4-5) regarding the integration of digital media into the architectural design process tend to distract from the more balanced investigation into how a designer masters an expanding architectural design practice. As a doctoral candidate I take a participant-observer position within Terroir where I have been employed for the past five years. My experiences in responding to my research question suggest that the advantage of digital media is not a question of whether or not to integrate the tools. The question is more an issue of how a designer masters an expanding design process through an approach that includes ideas, conventional media and digital media. My thesis demonstrates the changes that occurred through the integration of digital media and, conversely, possibilities to opportunistically further improve on conventional design practice. My research suggests that mutuality exists in the relationship between the designer and their digital media. Through their co-evolution, changes can occur where there is not only an integration of digital media with design, but also both media and design practice change through their integration. I also discuss how an uptake of digital media gives grounds for a new specialised ro le in practice. A new role emerged within the collaborative firm of architects, which I have called in this thesis the digital ideator. It is a role that I demonstrate as potentially being central to digital media integrated with design practice.

<p>”A designer rarely works alone”. The first sentence of Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman's chapter on design as a social process made me curious. What if a designer worked alone? What are the actual differences between working on a project alone and as part of a group? How would it influence the creative process? What would be different when coming up with ideas, meeting with clients and setting deadlines? Does the influence of another designer stifle the individual creativity or does it actually nurish it? This paper is written to answer these and other questions as well as take you through the creative process of the production of ”Daddy” - the music video.</p>

The purpose of this research is to identify complex cultural dynamics in theinstructional design process of a cross-sector, cross-border training environment by applying Young’s (2009) Culture-Based Model (CBM) as a theoretical framework and taxonomy for description of the instructional design process under the conditions of one case. The guiding question of this study is: How does culture, as defined by Young’s (2009) CBM framework, interact with the instructional design process in this case of a cross-sector, cross-border training program? This research uses the qualitative approach of case study and applies a cultural design framework to examine the process of instructional design by a team of designers-by-assignment in a NASA/university consortium program to train applied research and development teams for an education software company headquartered in India. Fifteen representative participants were chosen to reflect each role involved in the training program and instructional design process, including management, instructors and students. In over two years of engagement with participants, data was gathered at a NASA space center and in Mumbai, India through interviews, observation and artifact analysis. Data was analyzed to identify where components of the design process, decisions of the design team, and perceptions of the stakeholders overlap with culture as defined by Young’s CBM framework. The findings indicate that at least twenty-three distinguishable elements of culture interact across the design process in the: 1) goals and funding decisions of the client; 2) goals and design decisions of the design team; 3) perceptions of the training program of all stakeholders; and 4) the observable outcomes of the training program. The findings also offer insight into what stakeholders do or do not consciously attribute to culture. By empirically illuminating the pervasive presence of cultural interactions across the instructional design process, this study advocates for culture to be recognized as a construct of importance in our field and demonstrates the powerful capabilities of using a comprehensive descriptive model as a lens for exploring cultural dynamics in the instructional design process.

This research examines interviews conducted with more than a dozen authorities in architectural education on collaborative methodologies utilized in the design studio and identifies factors that inhibit and facilitate the incorporation of collaborative methods in the context of situated learning. This research explores the notion that the design and implementation of even the simplest architectural projects are almost exclusively collaborative endeavors requiring the expertise of a spectrum of individuals working together to achieve a singular goal. Each of these experts is highly trained in their respective areas, yet few are formally trained authorities in the skills of collaboration, including architects, individuals who are often put at the lead of design projects which include people of varied backgrounds, working styles and areas of expertise. Historically, the education of an architect has been a highly individualized pursuit, focused on the development of an individual skill set seldom requiring collaboration beyond that of student and professor. While this individualized, hands on approach to education has been highly revered by many, it often falls short of its potential and fails to recognize that the greatest design accomplishments of humankind have been the undertaking of collaborative enterprise. Furthermore, architecture students are being prepared in a manner that is contrary to the highly collaborative nature of the architectural practice they will enter without taking away from the inherent strengths of the traditional architectural education. Despite NAAB requirements for collaborative methods in the classroom, and an increasingly collaborative model of professional practice for architects, design education continues to trail woefully behind other disciplines such as business, law, nursing and medicine; each having long ago integrated collaborative study models into their curriculum. This research examines how collaborative methods including intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary and community based collaborations, can be further integrated as a formal part of the overall design curriculum and what factors facilitate and inhibit this inclusion.

This thesis is an investigation on the changing concept of space and its production, through a reconsideration of montage in the digital environment. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, collage and montage have been one of the key terms that lead the movements of art and architecture. Towards the end of the 80s, however, as a result of the introduction of the digital environment, the quality and quantity of methods of production and transfer of knowledge have increased and the flow of information has gained a noticeable importance. Through recent developments, the digital environment offers many opportunities for representation in architectural field as well as other professions. Montage, which is a technique for construction of a new meaning or entity throughout its history, now changes its character with the infinitely many opportunities digital environment proposes as well. Therefore, this thesis tries to examine the changing scope and formulation of montage in this specific environment through the example of digital compositing which is a recent design and production technique used in the field of photography and cinema. Digital compositing provides layering, editing and merging numerous elements in one frame. Through its inherent potential of decomposing time and juxtaposing different modes of realities, the concept of space and production and visualization techniques in the digital medium change also affecting the roles of the designer and the user in the process. Thus, this new formulation brings forward a new understanding of design process that acts as an interface both spatially and temporally.

The primary objective of this research is to develop a visual design process for gear trains with multiple stages of reduction and varying configurational architectures. One of the main challenges in the design of such gear trains is in the sizing of the individual gears such that high levels of performance are obtained in spite of constraints due to different gear configurations. Formal design procedures that successfully meet this challenge are developed. A key contribution of this research is the utilization of these design procedures to create sets of three-dimensional design maps. The design procedures help a designer manage more than 20 design parameters in designing for a broad range of gear train requirements (Rated torque capacity, Volume, Weight, Inertia, Responsiveness, Torque Density etc.) while accounting for assembly constraints. Each set of design maps corresponds to a given set of design parameters, some of which are held fixed and some of which are put in the hands of the designer. The latter set of design parameters are termed in this research as design knobs. They can be ‘tuned’ by a designer in order to generate new sets of design maps. The idea is that a designer, using the design information conveyed to him/her graphically through a given set of design maps, is able to then tune the design knobs to generate an updated set of design maps which reflect design solutions that are more desirable in terms of the application requirements. By adjusting the design knobs and looking at updated design maps, a designer is able to quickly assess the effect of his/her design decisions. The end result is that a single designer is empowered with the ability to quickly arrive at a preliminary design of a gear train that satisfies the design requirements. This preliminary design would be a good starting point for more detailed design development. / text

In fashion design, the designer strives for the development of ideas in view of significant visual goals. The process of specifying and developing ideas is a highly visual process. Based on what has been ‘seen’ as for example in a reference material or in explorations, designers define possible tracks to follow, decide which ideas to deepen or which ones to reject. Their activities can thus be described as a process of seeing. There is nothing novel about the importance of seeing as an act in the design process; on the contrary, seeing, is usually an intuitive act that any designer explicates throughout the process of shaping his/her vision. However, the systematisation of seeing in the design process in order to advance ways of working in the field of fashion design is still very much an area that is open for further research. In this thesis, possible ways of seeing are explored through experiments in different stages of the design process. Based on an image serving as a point of departure, seen elements were derived and put in relation to a body in a two-dimensional photographic sketching stage, in accordance with different ideas of dress. Selected ideas were then further elaborated and explored in terms of their design possibilities. The results of the experiments are propositions of design ideas that have been ‘seen’ in a single sketch or a series of sketches. The contribution of this licentiate thesis are: 1) A thorough mapping of two design stages (point of departure and two-dimensional sketching stage), and how they provide a deeper understanding of the design process, leading to 2) an improved sensibility with regard to design possibilities, their value and developments, and finally 3) the establishing of a methodology with which to discern the composition of a visual language/vision in fashion design based on ‘seeing’. The act of seeing is presented as the fundamental tool of designing for shaping a vision. By delving into the systematisation of the notion of seeing in a fashion design process, a methodology of seeing is introduced, which aims to enhance the possible ways of visualisation when designing.

The planning and scheduling of appropriate resources is essential in engineering design for delivering quality products on time, within cost and at acceptable risk. There is an inherent complexity in deciding what resources should perform which tasks taking into account their effectiveness towards completing the task, whilst adjusting to their availabilities. The right resources must be applied to the right tasks in the correct order. In this context, process modelling and simulation could aid in resource management decision making. However, most approaches define resources as elements needed to perform the activities without defining their characteristics, or use a single classification such as human designers. Other resources such as computational and testing resources, amongst others have been overlooked during process planning stages. In order to achieve this, literature and empirical investigations were conducted. Firstly, literature investigations focused on what elements have been considered design resources by current modelling approaches. Secondly, empirical studies characterised key design resources, which included designers, computational, testing and prototyping resources. The findings advocated for an approach that allows allocation flexibility to balance different resource instances within the process. In addition, capabilities to diagnose the impact of attaining specific performance to search for a preferred resource allocation were also required. Therefore, the thesis presents a new method to model different resource types with their attributes and studies the impact of using different instances of those resources by simulating the model and analysing the results. The method, which extends a task network model, Applied Signposting Model (ASM), with Bayesian Networks (BN), allows testing the influence of using different resources combinations on process performance. The model uses BN within each task to model different instances of resources that carries out the design activities (computational, designers and testing) along with its configurable attributes (time, risk, learning curve etc.), and tasks requirements. The model was embedded in an approach and was evaluated by applying it to two aerospace case studies. The results identified insights to improve process performance such as the best performing resource combinations, resource utilisation, resource sensitive activities, the impact of different variables, and the probability of reaching set performance targets by the different resource instances.

Submitted by Amanda Silva (amanda.osilva2@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-09T14:33:30Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) dissertacao_lalv.pdf: 3428243 bytes, checksum: 4cfc2cf496677e2d7b64975aee50848d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-09T14:33:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) dissertacao_lalv.pdf: 3428243 bytes, checksum: 4cfc2cf496677e2d7b64975aee50848d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / CAPES; CNPq / Understanding methodology in design as a schematized process composed by a set of steps in order to support problem solving, data mining or search for information activities are commonly performed on an initial step of this process, which can be called as problem exploration. This work focuses on identifying the influences that executing the problem exploration step can cause to the design team, as well to the final developed solutions. To achieve this objective, an initial investigation was performed in order to search for similar studies that could test these influences. After confirming the absence of such researches, an experiment was conducted to test techniques for problem exploration as a way to identify the possible influences of this step within the design process. The experiment was carried out in an undergraduate design class during four months and involved five groups of about six members each, who should develop concepts for problems about they did not have any previous information. Except for the problem exploration step, which could be performed differently, the five groups executed an identical framework of methods for problem solving. All documentation produced by the design teams was evaluated for a selected group of experts. As results for the experiment, it was concluded that the use of such problem exploration techniques gave more confidence to designers when responding to how well informed they were about the problem after confronting it, and although different groups performed distinct procedures as regards the tested step, no difference on the experts’ evaluation for the alternatives could be perceived. This way utilizing problem exploration techniques caused no influences on the final solutions developed.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第16463号 / 工博第3491号 / 新制||工||1528(附属図書館) / 29105 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科建築学専攻 / (主査)教授 門内 輝行, 教授 髙松 伸, 教授 神吉 紀世子 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当