An open source and web-based application to store, display, manipulate and share structured collections of design heuristics.
Heuristics play a great role in design creativity and learning. There is generally no systematic method designers can be provided with in order to derive optimal design solutions. In other words, it is neither possible to list all solutions to a given problem nor to prove the absolute superiority of a given solution. However, guidance can be provided to designers in the form of heuristics, i.e. set of solutions validated by practice, which have proven to lead towards satisfactory solutions, but which are not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect. Heuristics express a supposed causal relation between two design parameters. For example, in the context of automobile development, “overall weight” has a direct relation with “energy consumption in use.”
This tool allows displaying the network built by all causal relations between design parameters. It provides an environment to explore and navigate in this network in order to support creativity in design.
There is no installation required. Just download the package on a local folder. To use the application, open the file "Design-dependencies.html" with a web brower. That's it! The tool is still under development, so there is no user manual so far. A bit of development documentastion is available here. Work in progress...
This application uses:
- vis.js: a dynamic, browser based visualization library
- jquery: a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library
- dagre.js: a directed graph layout for JavaScript
- select2.js: a jQuery replacement for select boxes
- highcharts.js: an interactive JavaScript charts library
- font awesome: icon set and toolkit
This application is developped as part of research works performed at the Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany, and the University of Bath, England. More background information under:
- Bonvoisin, J., Tom Buchert, Rainer Stark, 2018. „Formal system for the expression of target-oriented design heuristics”. In: Marjanović D., M. Štorga, S. Škec, Bojčetić, N. Pavković, DS92: Proceedings of the DESIGN 2018 15th International Design Conference, pp. 45-56, Design Conference 2018, May 21-24, Dubrovnik, Croatia. DOI https://doi.org/10.21278/idc.2018.0120.
- Bonvoisin J., F. Mathieux, L. Domingo, D. Brissaud. 2010. Design for energy efficiency: proposition of a guidelines-based tool.. In: Proceedings of DESIGN 2010, the 11th International Design Conference, edited by D. Marjanovic, M. Storga, N. Pavkovic and N. Bojcetic, 629-638. Castle Cary: The Design Society.
If you use this work, pease refer to it as: Bonvoisin, J., Buchert, T., 2018. Design Dependencies Visualisation Tool. https://doi.org/10.15125/BATH-00518.