An Anthology of Theories and Models of Design: Philosophy, Approaches and Empirical Explorations

While investigations into both theories and models has remained a major strand of engineering design research, current literature sorely lacks a reference book that provides a comprehensive and up-to-date anthology of theories and models, and their philosophical and empirical underpinnings; An Anthology of Theories and Models of Design fills this gap.

The text collects the expert views of an international authorship, covering:

- significant theories in engineering design, including CK theory, domain theory, and the theory of technical systems;

- current models of design, from a function behavior structure model to an integrated model;

- important empirical research findings from studies into design; and

- philosophical underpinnings of design itself.

For educators and researchers in engineering design, An Anthology of Theories and Models of Design gives access to in-depth coverage of theoretical and empirical developments in this area; for practitioners, the book will provide exposure to theoretical and empirical foundations to methods and tools that are currently practiced as well as those in the process of development.

Amaresh Chakrabarti is a Professor of Engineering Design at Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has a BE in Mechanical Engineering from University of Calcutta, India, ME in Mechanical Systems Design from Indian Institute of Science, and a PhD from University of Cambridge, UK in Engineering Design. After PhD, Prof. Chakrabarti led for ten years the Design Synthesis team at the EPSRC Centre for Excellence Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge, before joining Indian Institute of Science. Prof. Chakrabarti worked extensively in the areas of design synthesis and creativity, eco-design and sustainability, and knowledge engineering and management, and authored/edited 7 books (3 published by Springer), over 230 peer-reviewed articles, and has 7 patents and 2 software copyrights granted/pending. With Prof. Lucienne Blessing, Prof Chakrabarti co-authored DRM, a design research methodology used widely around the world as a framework for carrying out engineering design research. Prof. Chakrabarti is an Associate Editor of AI EDAM Journal (Cambridge University Press), Area Editor for Research in Engineering Design (Springer), Regional Editor for Journal for Remanufacturing (Springer), and Advisory Editor for Journal of Engineering Design (Taylor & Francis), Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (Springer), and five other international journals. Prof. Chakrabarti is on the Advisory Board of Design Society, UK. Prof. Chakrabarti founded IDeASLab - the first laboratory in India for research into design creativity, sustainability and innovation. Prof. Chakrabarti is a Member of the CII National Committee on Design, India. He is Programme chair for International Conferences on Research into Design (ICoRD), and a vice-Chair for AI in Design (AID) and Design Computing and Cognition (DCC) Conferences. Prof. Chakrabarti is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Designers, the onlypeer society under the Royal Charter in the UK representing engineering design as a profession.
Lucienne Blessing studied Industrial Design Engineering in Delft, the Netherlands, where she obtained her MSc in 1984. Until 1992 she worked at the University of Twente (NL) in the department of Mechanical Engineering as a lecturer. Here she obtained her PhD in the area of Knowledge Management in Design. The following 8 years she worked at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge (UK), initially as senior research associate and from 1995 as Assistant Director of the Engineering Design Centre. In 2000 she was appointed to the Chair of Engineering Design and Methodology at the University of Technology Berlin. In 2007 she left Berlin to become vice-president for research at the University of Luxembourg, where she also has a chair in Engineering Design and Methodology. Her research interests include: the product development process, diversity (culture, age and gender), user-technology interaction, design methodology and design research methodology . She has been lecturing since 1985 covering the following topics: introduction to process control, technical drawing and projection theory, design research methods, machine elements, systematic product development. Furthermore, 21 researchers successfully defended their PhD under her supervision and 5 under her co-supervision; currently she is supervising 5 doctoral candidates. Since 1999 Lucienne Blessing is co-organiser of the International Summer School on Engineering Design Research, a 2-week course for PhD students. In 2000, she co-founded the Design Society, was elected member of its Management Board from 2000-2005, and has since been an elected member on its Advisory Board. She was co-editor of the journal Research in Engineering Design (Springer Verlag) from 1994-2009. Together with Ken Wallace (UK), she translated the German standard book on Engineering Design from Professors Pahl and Beitz into English. She has written a book on Design Research Methodology together with Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti, and is (co)author of over 160 peer-reviewed publications. She has been in the organization and programme committees of various conferences, and is reviewer of journal articles, conference papers, as well as research projects.