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The Influence of the Designer’s Expertise on the Design Process

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Mechanical Design: Theory and Methodology

Abstract

Designers bring their prior experience and expertise to the design process whenever they read drawings, draw, or design or when they observe. It is for this reason that one cannot separate the process from the expertise of the designer. What is designed is integrally tied to the designer. The question then arises: “Are there notable differences between experienced and not-so-experienced designers, and if there are, what form do they take?” In this chapter we summarize our previous work on identifying the differences between the approaches of designers with different levels of expertise. These include the differences in recall of drawings, in reasoning about motion, in reasoning about drawings, and in designing. We present the implications of this work on the design process.

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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Waldron, M.B., Waldron, K.J. (1996). The Influence of the Designer’s Expertise on the Design Process. In: Waldron, M.B., Waldron, K.J. (eds) Mechanical Design: Theory and Methodology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2561-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2561-2_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-2563-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2561-2

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