Observations of designer behaviors in complex system design
Name
765335476-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
3 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c4133beb86fcedf645d342d07d4218b3
Author(s)
Austin-Breneman, Jesse
Advisor(s)
Maria C. Yang.
Date Issued
2011
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The design of large-scale engineering systems requires design teams to balance a complex set of considerations. Formal approaches for optimizing complex system design assume that designers behave in a rational, consistent manner. However, observation of design practice suggests that there are limits to the rationality of designer behavior. This paper explores the gap between complex system designs generated via formal design process and those generated by teams of human designers. Results show that human design teams employed a range of strategies but arrived at suboptimal designs. Analysis of their design histories suggest three possible causes for the human design teams' performance: poorly executed global searches rather than well executed local searches, a focus on optimizing single design parameters, and sequential implementations rather than concurrent optimization strategies.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-51).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
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