Design research and industry relevance - Keynote paper

This paper investigates the relationship between research in engineering design and needs of industry. A brief overview of design research is given first, followed by a look at design practice typical of industry today. Expected changes in engineering products and the business environment are then examined in order to evaluate industry needs. The potential of each general type of design research area to meet industry needs identified is then considered. It was found that industry's highest priority is for tools, techniques, and infrastructure to improve the quality of designs, provide support to distributed and multi-disciplinary design teams, and improve and integrate design tools and environments. Research in engineering design was classified into eleven basic categories and the potential impact of each on each of the industry needs was considered. Based on a correlation matrix, it was found that the three research areas that have the greatest relevance to industry are: Design information systems, integration infrastructure for design tools, and collaborative design tools and techniques. A surprising finding of this study was that the development of design theories or formal models of the design process were not considered very relevant to design practice in industry.