A Knowledge Basis for Engineering Design

A Knowledge Basis for Engineering Design Stephen T. Frezza, C.S.D.P. Computer and Information Science Gannon University Erie, PA [email protected] Abstract—This paper presents the application of knowledgebased epistemology of engineering to the understandings of the engineering design process. This work aims to extend discussion on Philosophy of Engineering into its impact on our understanding of engineering design. The question this paper aims to address is how a knowledge-based philosophy of engineering supports the distinctive challenges in distinguishing engineering design from scientific exploration and artistic design. Centrally, this paper argues for the centrality of argument, at the center of engineering design. The paper then aims at discussing implications that such an understanding of design would have on the learning of engineering design. Keywords—Philosophy of Engineering; Engineering Design, Design Education

I.

Epistemology;

INTRODUCTION

Engineering education can be viewed as a resource limited activity. The design of an engineering program is one where the number of courses or credits required of an undergraduate student is significantly limited with respect to the knowledge, skills and affect desired by educators and industry over their tenure in the program. Engineering educators work to optimize undergraduate programs to best meet their national, accreditation and institutional requirements. But in the design activity which is the development and maintenance of engineering programs, one has to wonder if there are broader, cross-cutting requirements that extend beyond or across national, accreditation and/or institutional boundaries. Essentially, the question of what makes an engineering program engineering – or as an engineer might ask it – what makes engineering program engineering enough [1]: What should distinguish engineering program content from the science, mathematics, arts and discipline-specific content that constitute the program? The national, accreditation, institutional and/or historical standards utilized in a particular setting provide a rich sociallyconstructed definitions of engineering [2]. To look beyond these definitions for broader, cross-cutting requirements requires evaluating the philosophical basis for the various viewpoints for engineering, and analyzing these for distinguishing elements. Many valuable treatments of engineering philosophy specifically aim to distinguish engineering from science [2,4], or from art [5,6]. To this extent, efforts to utilize epistemology (knowledge/knowing) provides an additional means to distinguish engineering as a practice and discipline [3].

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II.

A KNOWLEDGE-BASIS FOR ENGINEERING

The viewpoints of engineering and science can be considered pragmatic and idealistic respectively [3]. The nature of science explains how the world works, typically learned though experiments (producing artifacts). The value of the effort is in its typically assesed by its power to predict or model observed phenomena. Knowledge generation, from the perspective of scientists is approached via creating a hypothesis first, and testing it second. The nature of engineering is for addressing human needs, and generally applies domain-specific heuristics for building a system [1]. The value of the effort is typicaly assessed by its power to address the human need in a rich context of considerations (constraints) that are situationdependent. What distinguishes scientific knowledge from engineering knowledge is not the creation or use of artifacts/technology, rather it is the values stemming from the scientific and engineering viewpoints and how they are pragmatically applied (purpose and method) – hence the concept of a ‘pragmatic theory’ of knowledge. This distinction in knowledge generation is both individual and social; it affects the use of the knowledge, and shapes the manner in which it is generated [7]. If valid, it presents a significantly different lens through which one can distinguish engineering from its scientific and artistic roots, as well as the spectrum of engineering sub-disciplines that have developed. The pragmatic theory of knowledge identifies purpose (goal) and manner (method) of knowledge application and generation as distinguishable characteristics useful for distinguishing engineering foundations from its historical roots in science and mathematics [7]. Historically the ‘Science and Math’ (French) and ‘Apprenticeship’ (English) schools of engineering have significantly influenced engineering education and training [6]. The science and math school currently dominates most engineering education, and emphasizes knowledge and knowledge generation whereas the apprenticeship school emphasizes pragmatic application. The difficulty lies in trying to integrate these schools, when the science and math approach de-emphasizes the pragmatic, and the apprenticeship approach de-emphasizes knowledge generation. The foundations of engineering necessarily include both pragmatic knowledge and pragmatic knowledge generation. A knowledge-generation epistemology implies that engineering foundations are more than just the knowledge of science and mathematics, more than applied math and science, and more than pragmatic apprenticeship of an engineering design method [7]. Engineering, at its foundations is ‘both’

using science and mathematics ‘and’ pragmatic, and more than both: it is about generating and using knowledge for a purpose and with a method that is more than theory, more than descriptive: it is useful, and the usefulness is never ideal, but rather located within a context. This value of usefulness as a distinguishing factor is significant, and changes both how knowledge is generated and how it is used [3]. More importantly, this epistemolgical lens suggests that engineering activites may best be viewed by a set of values (pragmatic use), which are necessarily located in a context, and exploring the context is part of the engineering activity - design. The role context is significant, because from a knowledge perspective, context includes sociological expectations, domain-specific patterns and problem-specific knowledge that either that must be brought, learned or synthesized as part of the engineering activity. This necessarily includes the historical, scientific and artistic roots of engineering practice, embodied in the knowledge expected of current engineers, as well as the engineering heuristics and patterns specific to sub-domains of engineering (e.g., electrical, mechanical, civil, software, etc.) but also the needs and constraints of the specific problems being addressed. III.

CONSIDERING DESIGN

At the heart of most definitions of engineering lay the concept of design, both as process, human-centered activity, and as a work product. At it’s core, engineering creates objects, systems, or processes to satisfy human needs and desires. There are methods by which designs are created [1], and fundamentally these human activities can be considered language-centric [5]. Generally, the process by which these objects, systems or processes are created is called ‘design.’ A central feature of design activity is its reliance on generating a satisfactory solution, rather than a prolonged analysis of the problem. It is typified by the development of multiple satisfactory solutions or solution fragments, rather than attempting to generate the one hypothetically optimum solution; a process of pattern synthesis, rather than pattern recognition [6]. This process of creating and describing a solution employs different ways of knowing that distinguish it from science. Science creates theories, reusable patterns for explaining, while engineering design creates. While this explanation is straightforward and readily grasped. However it provides little insight into the differences in the processes used in each discipline to achieve their goals [8]. As a human activity, social construction is inherent to effective design processes. This work has been examined elsewhere [5], identifying the key role that language, and language construction plays in effective design activity. The key observation is that design involves both the ideal and the rough, whose processes involve the learning of language, and mutual agreement on meaning to achieve a goal. IV.

PHILOSOPHY AND DESIGN

Frederick Brooks, Jr. in his cogent work The Design of Design argues that the philosophies dominating engineering design (and by implication, engineering educational systems) are either fundamentally rationalist or empiricist. The

perspectives are themselves two-fold, presenting both a view of designers and of the process of design. The rationalist view sees designers as capable of flawless designs, and the design methodology task is to learn how to reason a design into flawlessness. The empiricist view sees designers as fundamentally flawed, and the design methodology task is to learn how to identify the flaws by experiment [9]. These views are well-held historically, alternatively described as the French (mathematics/ ideal) and the British (experimental/ apprenticeship) schools of engineering [9,2]. While well rooted in the history and philosophy of science, these two models do little to distinguish engineering from science or art. What the rationalist and empiricist philosophical approaches leave room for, but fail to address are the more unique issues central to engineering design, specifically what designers know and how they know it. “…there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer. The creative, constructive knowledge of the engineer is the knowledge needed to implement that art.” [4]. This would appear as a specialized type of knowing - creative, constructive knowledge and skill. But beyond this specialized knowing there are the behaviors that help engineers succeed, bring honor to their profession, and make technology a force for good in the world. Engineers are expected to link effectiveness and creativity, where conscientiousness is the virtue suggested to be the most valuable for engineers [6]. Other philosophies, particularly epistemology, suggest a different basis for this type of knowing [3,10]. Epistemology examines the question of if and how people can formulate and support a ‘justified true belief’ [3]. In this discussion, the focus is not on whether or how a person in general formulates a ‘justified, true belief,’ but rather what distinguishes engineering methods for formulating a ‘justified, true belief’ from other methods. Here, the seminal work of Bernard Lonergan on the Method of the Human Mind serves as a useful starting point. A. Method of the Human Mind Philosopher Bernard Lonergan argues a “method of the human mind,” consisting of experiencing, understanding, and judging, underlies all specialized forms of knowing. This basic heuristic method or structure is tailored in various ways to meet the particular requirements of specialized contexts such as everyday practical life and the fields of mathematical and empirical science [11]. In the "method of the human mind," experiencing provides us with data and depends upon adherence to a norm of attentiveness. Our striving to make sense of the data (e.g., “What is it?), promotes us from experiencing to attempts to understand; to finding the form, pattern, meaning, or significance of what we have experienced. Inquiry and imagination yield insights, which are expressed in concepts and definitions to provide a formulation of the understanding attained. In Lonergan’s terms, inquiry, insight and formulation embody a norm of intelligence. Because understandings may be misunderstandings, we cannot stop with inquiry, insight or initial formulations, but must go on to ask the critical question, “is it really so?” which is particularly

important in the context of conflicting data. The process of answering this question thematizes our desire to move through critical reflection to judgment. Judging marshals and weighs the evidence to assess the adequacy of our understanding. The evidence is adequate if it shows that the conditions necessary for something's being so are all met. If they are met, within the context our knowing reaches a “virtually unconditioned” state, whose conditions for justified belief are all fulfilled, so that it no longer is conditional and until proven otherwise, must be true. The norm embodied in these operations of judging is that of reasonableness. The overall method is adjusted based on the perceived need for timeliness, precision, comprehensiveness, universality, and/or completeness [11]. This is where the viewpoint of knowledge is critical, as individual need or use for the proposition and the social context affect the manner in which something is known. While this general theory of knowing supports key undertandings of the specialized knowing of the engineer, it does little to distinguish what makes the experiencing, understanding and judging of the engineer any different from that of the scientist, mathematician or artist. Here is where a knowledge basis is particularly useful for exploring what distinguishes engineering knowing from other types of knowing, and in identifying characteristics that distinguish engineering knowing from other types of knowing. B. Distinguising Characteristics Engineering Knowing Our approach to examining distinctions is to examine particular distinguishing characteristics. In this context, what are of interest are distinguishing characteristics of the experiencing, understanding and judging typical of core engineering activity: engineering design. Synthesizing the work of others, four characteristics of engineering design appear useful: The use/role of math and science in design, the importance of practical reasoning to design, the constructive nature of design, and the inherent values of design. •

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Engineering use of math and science: is primarily as a means to an end, and includes the realization that math and science (ideal/empirical) are only approximations of reality [12]. Role of practical reasoning: fundamentally design is about the application of practical reasoning [12], that it is about reasoning to support action. In this context, it is reasoning that uses ‘satisfactoriness’ as its central metric, where details are essential to reasoning, and the relevance of details is not necessarily obvious Constructive: From a linguistic or goal perspective, engineering knowing differs from other knowing in the goal: It is always future-focused, about how things aught to be [5,6]. Engineering knowing focuses on the description of a new object, system or process that did not but might exist. Values and value claims: Another area that distinguishes design includes the discussion on how the inherent values embedded into engineering design

The immediate observation is that these four characteristics of engineering design are not independently sufficient to

distinguish engineering knowing from other types of knowing. V.

APPROXIMATING REALITY

Current engineering pedagogies emphasize mathematics and science as the foundation of engineering. Many definitions of engineering, as well as accreditation criteria used in the United States, Canada, Sweden, and other nations identify mathematics and science knowledge as essential to engineering education. The question is what role science plays in engineering, and what role they should play in engineering education. From a knowledge-based perspective, scientific claims derive their meaning from the theories within which they are associated, and consequently, mathematical and scientific knowledge is theory-bound. The dynamic process in which scientists continuously revise what they are willing to endorse and by which they examine their assumptions and their methods – is at the very heart of the strength of the sciences. The self-critical process of scientific inquiry insures that the knowledge it claims is the best available, and the most predictive model of reality available at that time. The ultimate aim of scientific inquiry is explanation. Thus, in the context of a pragmatic account, the ultimate success of the use of mathematical and scientific knowledge is explanation [3]. The fundamental purpose of the inquiry mode belies the differences between engineering and the sciences. "Technology, though it may apply science, is not the same as or entirely applied science" [4]. Engineering knowledge concerns the design, construction, and operation of artifices for the purpose of manipulating the human environment. [3] One can reasonably narrow the focus of engineering knowledge to the topic of "design knowledge," by concentrating on design. "Design" in this context denotes both the content of a set of plans (as in "the design for a new airplane") and the process by which those plans are produced. In the latter meaning, it typically involves tentative layout (or layouts), expressed in some language (abstract, natural, or visual) of the arrangement and dimensions (properties) of the object, checking of the candidate object by mathematical analysis or experimental test to see if it accomplishes the goal in a sufficiently satisfactory manner. If it does not, then it is modified in ways to better achieve the goal. This is a process of refinement, subject to a perceived need for timeliness, precision, comprehensiveness, and/or completeness and the effort is judged by its results – the usefulness of the design and/or product [3,4]. One of the key pragmatic distinctions between this iterative scientific approach and the engineering approach is its goal: The scientist aims at explanation: universal, reliable, comprehensive and sufficiently precise formulation of knowledge; the engineer, aims at timeliness, completeness, with sufficient precision and comprehension [10]. Science and math are used in design as means to an end, tools to approximate reatlity and not an end in themselves. Similarly this is different from artistic design in that its primary goal (goodness) is its ability to solve the contextually-located problem for which the task was undertaken. This observation directly parallels a key observations drawn from the close study of design teams. What was observed parallels this pragmatic knowledge perspective: the role of mathematics, science and other predictive models of reality are

used sparingly. These analytical models are central to the rationalist approach to engineering, yet in practice mathematics are not the universal language of engineering design [5], and the approximations of reality provided by science are themselves only supportive to the reasoning necessary to good design [12]. Consideration of design reasoning is the second distinguishing characteristic. VI.

THE ROLE OF PRACTICAL REASONING

Significant contributions to the philosophy of engineering include the observation that design is a social enterprise that at its core is a conversation spoken in a language of its own invention [5], a language that facilitates the constructive nature of designing [6]. As one author puts it, “In order to cope with ill-defined problems, designers have to learn to have the selfconfidence to define, redefine and change the problem-asgiven in the light of the solution that emerges from the minds and hands.” [6] While this suggests personal traits needed for designers, this also suggests that design is in fact a conversation – a set of arguments developed both in the mind of the designer, between collaborating designers, among the members of a design team, and between and among designers and stakeholders. Understanding these discussions, and developing the ability to engage successfully in these discussions is a central goal of engineering design edication. In this vein, this research in this area includes significant work in the social construction of the conversations [5,12], exploration and documentation of expert guidelines [9], and other means for documenting the State Of The Art (SOTA) and the heurisitcs common to an engineering domain or discipline [1]. However, these (typically discipline-specific) approaches tend to leave out the method of the conversation – what type of reasoning is necessarily involved in redefining the problem in order to negotiate and solve it. In essence, by focusing on the content and empirical guidelines for these conversations, designers can sidestep the underlaying nature of the communications inherent in design. Unless one is thuroughly conversant in the language of that discipline, the nature of the design ‘argument’ remains opaque [5,6,12]. An alternative view is to examine the conversation around design by the form(s) of the reasoning needed; From this perspective, design is still a social enterprise that at its core is a conversation… but in this sense, while design may employ a language invented by, and unique to the designers, it is about the application of practical reasoning [12] about how things aught to be. Practical reasoning, in the sense applied here, is an exercise of reasoning that terminates in an action. The core metric applied is ‘satisfactoriness,’ that is the selection of any course of action that is a satisfactory way to fulfill a need. Practical reasoning “syllogisms” are not as compelling as those used in theoretical reasoning, and as such are more contingent upon the details [12]. While practical reasoning serves a similar role in the development of scientific knowledge, its practical purpose in design is significantly different. In science, practical reasoning forms the basis for experimental design to support theory claims, and is used to build evidence in support of formal assertions. In engineering design, it is about action – action to explore requirements, advance designs, evaluate sufficiency of

either the object being designed (product) or the process by which it is being developed (process). Knowledge valued pragmatically. Consistent with explorations of the social nature of design [1,5,6], the practical reasoning needed for design implies that there is not an expectation for a single right answer. E.g., every proposed response must be contingently evaluated. Its satisfactoriness is assessed in light of the details known and the problem as currently understood. [12]. Consequently it is part of the designers responsibility to explore the problem, and build the case for (or against) the design proposed. The key skill implied here is argument – to enable the designer to better formulate practical reasoning that is built on tacit (empirical) or predictive (rationalist) knowledge, or a mix of both. To better assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of arguments. To better understand the strength and value of the language developed (design artifacts), and those that need to be developed. Design activities and artifacts, when viewed from this pragmatic knowledge perspective, are more like warrants and reaons – and are actions that serve to build the case for the solution, for a value claim with respect to the problem(s) identified [12]. While activities and artifacts extend the knowledge and conversation of the design, it is their relevance that helps determine the next activities. Examining the details of the problem or solution fragments requires a certain reasoning skill. This requires the designer(s) to identify the relavent details from the surrounding context and weave it into a plan that most satisfactorily achieves the sought-for good. This related skill has been termed “synthetic reasoning” [12]. Design activity viewed in this way might be better defined as building of the case for a design, that we can begin to see fundamental skills of reasoning and argumentation meet with, and rely upon another set of skills relative to people and communications. Conversely, the ‘science’ or SOTA involved becomes an important aspect of the proposals (value claims), warrants and reasons that are at the heart of the argument – but they are not the argument. And in a very unique way, the method of design includes reasoning about failure, and from failure. Practical reasoning, while necessary, can not be the only distinguishing characteristic of engineering design. For example, practical reasoning is commonly used in many human situations requiring judgement and action. Take for example the reasoning required to park a car. The driver, in determining the actions to be taken, will use sensory judgements of where the vehicle is, knowledge of the goal of where the car is to be moved to, as well as the expectation of where the vehicle will move to given the position of the steering wheel, accelerator, etc.. Combining these, the driver decides where to turn the wheel, when and how much to accelerate or brake, and when to stop and reassess the situation relative to the goal and the percieved risks of damage or injury. Practical reasoning plays a central role in the assessment – the building of an internal argument as to where to turn the wheel, when and how much to accelerate, etc. This is not design though. While parking a car is a goal-oriented activity, like design, and involves a mix of tacit knowledge and process, its goal is significantly different. Its goal involves satisfying a

human need or desire, but it is not about the creation of a new object, system or process to satisfy a need or desire. This is where the constructive nature of design plays a key and distinguishing role. VII.

CONSTRUCTIVE NATURE OF DESIGN

“By design” is to do something on purpose that may not follow an ideal picture – rather design problems require a satisfactory response, and often an ongoing serise of satisfactory responses. In this regard, the character of the response is a function of the character of the designer(s). Thirdly, design problems can be characterized as ‘wicked’ problems – in that there is no definitive formulation; solutions are unique, and emerge as a function of how the problem is described and must be compared to each other on grounds that require judgement calls over somehthing’s relative “goodness,” the criteria for which must be negotiated [12]. What emerges is the central concept that solving a design problem is not simply a matter of choosing the ‘best’ of several possibles responses – it is also a matter of devising possible responses, possible in the changing concept of the understanding of the problem. As one design researcher put it, “puzzle making and puzzle solving” [13]. In this sense, requirements management serves a critical role – in the search for constraints and problem analysis that constrains the solutions space to only those designs which are minimally satisfactory. In general, this always involves the creation of new descriptions of potential objects, systems or processes [4]. While this may seem obvious to most designers, it is not obvious from a knowledge perspective, nor is this language construction obvious to novice designers. The artifacts and conversations that are part of the design process serve not only as sub-goals for the knowledge-generating activities, but also as evidence of what has been learned, accepted, or remains to be assessed for its validity or ‘goodness.’ In a similar way, the analysis of potential objects, systems and processes yields the gaps in designs that uncover aspects of problems that require further exploration for the design to be good enough [13]. VIII. VALUES AND VALUE CLAIMS When looking at the knowledge involved in engineering design, the necessary value question that the designer must consider is the goodness or usefulness of a particular result, plan or proposal within the design. Establishing and evaluating these value claims are essential to the operation of practical reasoning as each argument, each assertion and each artifact that becomes a part of the design conversation. These are the basis and claims that support the sufficiency assessments. Another area that distinguishes design includes the discussion on the inherent values embedded into engineering design work [12]. This can be roughly decomposed into two areas, those relative to the process, and those relative to the designer. Design as a process has action as its goal. The values relative to the process of design are thus the value claims central to the assertion of practical reasoning employed to devise satisfactory responses to context-dependent problems.

Because of the time- and context-dependent nature of ‘problems,’ and the focus on action, a universal set of design values lies in a timely, sufficiently complete, sufficiently precise solution that is in fact delivered. This is a critical shift of emphasis that can reasonably distinguish engineering design from other forms of knowledge generation. For this to be effective, designers need a significant understanding of sufficiency, which necessarily involves understanding and applying the social context of their work [7]. From a knowledge perspective, it is the potential for the wrong problem to be solved (failed context) that is just as much as a risk as solving the problem wrongly (failed sufficiency). However, there is a third significant impact of values and value claims: the balance between the two sources of value: for engineering, the context can impact both the needs of the products of the design effort (e.g., product requirements), and the effort itself (project requirements). This distinction can be observed readily in a real-world context: What good is the perfect solution if it costs too much, or takes too long to get to market (failed context)? Or what good is a product delivered on-time and on-budget, but fails to meet user expectations (failed sufficiency)? This shift has significant impact on both practice and pedagogy: A move away from single-solution thinking, away from ‘analysis paralysis’ where the ‘best is the enemy of the good enough.’ An example of this it is not the one single, best right answer that comprises good engineering. Rather the best engineering answer(s) are at their core judged pragmatically, and routinely involve social context (e.g., a company, a customer) that is part of the argument for the ‘goodness’ of the solution developed. To summarize, engineering design when viewed from a knowledge-basis, can be defined as a human process that creates objects, systems, or processes to satisfy human needs and desires. Engineering design is necessarily consructive, both in language and in artifact and relies upon practical reasoning resulting in actions that create and communicate the design. Engineering design utilizes math and science and other approximations of reality to develop satisfactory, rather than ideal solutions. It encompasses context-rich problems, and includes the exploration of those problems. Engineering design is value-rich, both in the process of design and in the objects, systems and processes it produces. This definition of engineering design differs in emphasis from that currently dominant in endingeering education [9,2,12]. Consequently, this knowledge-basis view of engineering design presents significant challenges for engineering design edcuators, and significant opportunities for improving engineering design pedagogy. IX.

IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN PEDAGOGY

From this examination of a knowledge-basis for design, all engineers are designers by virtue of the practical reasoning they constantly and repeatedly employ to devise satisfactory responses to context-dependent problems [12]. This should be contrasted with the historical, socially-costructed view of engineering dominant in engineering education. If accepted,

this implication strongly suggests that the focus of engineering should shift from applied technical or scientific knowledge to practical reasoning and problem solving. It significantly suggests that what we should call engineering is broader, and deeper in impact than what is identified by accrediting bodies whose guidelines are built primarily from the historical-social viewpoint. This line of reasoning suggests that there is a broader understanding of engineering as a discipline and set of activities that cross national, accreditation, and instituional lines. For the designer or maintainer of an engineering program, the implications are significant – Foundations in engineering go beyond discipline-specific norms and are rooted in synthetic reasoning necessary for design, and the practical reasoning surrounding puzzle making and puzzle solving. Engineering fundamentals are thus neither rooted in math and science nor in art. For the engineering educator trying to better optimize limited course or credit hours, this suggests significant development of skills and affect surrounding argumentation and problem identification. This line of reasoning also suggests that the social-historical view of engineering as applied science is incomplete. To the educator, this provides an opportunity for optimization in reexamining and re-definiting role of science and mathematics within their program. It also suggests that any particular mathematics (such as calculus) or a particular science (such as physics) should be driven by sub-discipline needs (e.g., understanding of the state-of-the-art [1]), and is not necessarily common (or to be required) of every particular engineering sub-discipline [10]. Engineering design is about the application of practical reasoning, utilizing mathematics and science as a means, engaged in the about how things aught to be - the constructive nature of designing [6]. Such a broad definition of engineering design resonates with, and extends work suggesting that there is significantly more to be learned in engineering that is not located within a particular discipline [1,5,6]. Most centrally, this work suggests that there is a body of applicable work in philosophy of engineering that is central to design education. At the undergraduate level, where most engineering students select a sub-discipline to specialize in, this implies that undergraduate engineering programs should emphasize of a common core to engineering including design reasoning. This could be a significant departure from the mathematics and science coursework common to most current programs. Similarly, there is more opportunity for cross-disciplinary work that builds on, and reinforces the cognitive and affective aspects of ethical and design reasoning. A. Teach the Philosophy of Design Practical reasoning and synthetic reasoning affect, knowledge and skills are at the heart of the design. To provide novice designers access to this type of learning begins with foundational work in philosophy about the development of claims and evaluation of reasons. This is not just a skill or a course in logic, but rather focusing on both cognitive and affective domain learning. The emphasis would need to focus on engaging pedagogy that emphasizes and develops not only

knowledge of reasoning, but skill in argument and affect for correctness and detail. The type of reasoning to emphasize would be: • Reasoning to support action. • Reasoning that uses ‘satisfactoriness’ as its central metric, • Reasoning with incomplete knowledge • Reasoning where details are essential • Reasoning in situations where the relevance of details is not clear or obvious An area to expand and emphasize more would be in current programs that include significant development work in ethical reasoning. These courses could be expanded beyond traditional work in ethics to include affective domain work relating ethical reasoning and design reasoning [12]. Foundationally, expanding the role of philosophy education as a foundation for design education will be difficult. This means finding and educating engineering educators in philosophy, and philosophy educators in the philosophies of engineering. This would be difficult work, as engineering educators rarely have backgrounds in philosophy, so the need and the value of such education would not be obvious or clear, which similarly makes it difficult to transmit to students. Philosophy is often avoided in undergraduate engineering programs, and is not considered a part of the graduate education or culture from which the majority of engineering design educators are found. B. Establish Core Engineering Design This work suggests that engineering design at its core is disciplinary-neutral, and always includes locating problems contextually. The task for the engineering design educator is to develop means for students to develop knowledge and skills to work well within a problem context, and translate those skills and learning to another context. A few suggestions for common, disciplinary-neutral design education would include addressing puzzle-making, risk and failure and to identify the user perspective. •

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Puzzle Making and Puzzle Solving: An educators’ goal should include helping students realize that in engineering, the goal is not just to solve the problem right, but in fact to solve the right problem. Contextual problem solving includes the study the nature of problems, and discovery of problems in a context that is not the engineers’. In current disciplinary terminology, this typically termed ‘requirements management.’ Pedagogically this includes communication and team skills, as well as requirements and project management topics. In the affective domain, this includes helping students develop and value discovering and refining a stakeholder’s problem. A growing body of research and teaching materials in requirements engineering emphasizes this area of engineering problem solving. Risk and Failure: One of the more difficult transitions in classroom work is allowing students to fail, yet examination of many creative and useful products clearly demonstrates that designers learn from their failures, and

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in fact, some exploratory work is intended to ‘fail’ in the sense that they are only solution fragments. Failures of one design (or one person) are at time solutions of future problems, or the foundation for new inventions. Consequently, a rich design education, which includes practical reasoning, and creative problem solving, failures are not only inevitable, but also possible solutions for new products. Not having design as an integrated pedagogical activity of all engineering curricula will deprive students from valuable design thinking and learning that are direct outcomes of making mistakes and conducting failure analysis. Identify the User Perspective: In all useful products, systems and processes, there is a user, persons or organizations that depend upon the object being developed. A useful phrase from requirements engineering is that “people have problems, and systems have requirements” and that it is the engineers’ responsibility to take responsibility for interacting with, communicating with the persons with the problem, because in real problems, details matter, and the way that problems are described affects the development of an satisfactory solution. Even for projects significantly abstracted from a particular user, the definition of, and consequences of failure always have the potential to affect some stakeholder. Helping students to understand this context can be significantly motivating, and provide a key source of context for design.

In all, the more key challenge for educators is to develop learning experiences that help students step beyond their disciplinary foci. This is as much of an attitude as it is a set of skills. The challenge for the modern academy is to develop disciplinary-neutral education when most engineering educators are hired for their research and disciplinary-specific expertise, not their ability to lead cross-disciplinary learning. C. Emphasize Wicked Learning At its best, engineering problem solving is about problems that are in the words of Rittel and Weber: “wicked.” In the real world, problems that require the best designers are those: • Whose solutions emerge as a function of how the problem is described… • That lack clear-cut criteria for determining if the problem has been satisfactorily solved… • Whose solutions are about better or worse, not right or wrong… • That lack any mechanisms for proofs, only the ability to identify that the solution is unsatisfactory… • Whose costs and risks only allow for one attempt, with no iteration… This type of open-ended problem solving requires significant creative, personal and team skills [6]. ‘Wicked’ education is a significant challenge to a math- and science- centered education, where problems are presented in clean, unique and solvable ‘closed form’ manner, which may provide students with basic knowledge, but confuse the nature of real-world

problem solving [12]. This challenge is more significant than it appears, as both students and faculty have a cultural expectation that engineering is about math and science, not math and science at the service of problem solving. The educational challenge is to provide more than a single experience of open-ended problem solving. While many programs include a significant open-ended design experience, integrating wicked problems more significantly into the curriculum can be challenging, both from the problem selection and the practice and dialog needed to help students master design skills for wicked problems. X.

CONCLUSIONS

This work presents a very brief treatment of the philosophy of engineering as it applies to the philosophy of design. It applies a pragmatic-theory of knowledge as a lens for examining the nature of engineering design primarily as a human activity. Using this lens, a knowledge-basis for design emerges that significantly distinguishes engineering from mathematics, science. From a knowledge-basis, engineering design creates objects, systems, or processes to satisfy human needs and desires. In this vein, engineering design is necessarily consructive, both in language and in artifact. Its roots lay in practical reasoning utilizing math and science and other approximations of reality to develop satisfactory solutions. It encompasses context-rich problems, and includes the exploration of those problems within its domain. And engineering design is value-rich, both in the process of design and in the objects, systems and processes it produces. This knowledge-basis view of engineering design presents significant challenges for engineering design edcuators. Over the mathematics- and science-dominant programs currently deployed, this definition of engineering design emphasizes the philosophy of design, provides basis for a core, disciplineneutral design, and provides a foundation for emphasizing ‘wicked’ problems at the center of design education. [1]

[2] [3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

XI. WORKS CITED Billy Vaughn Koen, Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving.: Oxford University Press, 2003. Samuel C Floorman, The Civilized Engineer. NY: St. Martins Press, 1987. Joseph C. Pitt, "What Engineers Know," Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol. 5, no. 3, Fall 2007. Walter Vincente, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology). Baltimore, MD, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Louis L. Bucciarelli, "Designing, Like Language, is a Social Process," in Engineering Philosophy. Delft, Netherlands: Delft University Press, 2003, pp. 9-22. Nigel Cross, Designerly ways of knowing. Basel, Switzerland, 2007.

[7] Stephen Frezza, David Norquest, and Richard Moodey, "Knowledge-generation epistemology and the foundations of engineering," in 2013 Frontiers in Education, Seattle, 2013. [8] John and Bassett, Gregory Krupczak, "Abstraction as a Vector: Distinguishing Philosophy of Science from Philosophy of Engineering," in Proceedings of the 120th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Atlanta, 2013, Paper ID 7154. [9] Frederick P. Brooks, The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist. Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education, 2010. [10] Stephen Frezza, David Nordquest, Richard Moodey, and Krishnakishore Pilla, "Applying a knowledge-generation epistemological approach to computer science and software engineering," in 120th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Atlanta, 2013.

[11] Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding., 5th ed., S.J. and F. E. Crowe, S.J. R. M. Doran, Ed. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1992. [12] Brad J. Kallenberg, By Design: Ethics, Theology, and the Practice of Engineering. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. [13] T. Smithers, "Design as exploration: Puzzle-making and puzzle solving.," in Workshop on Search-Based and Exploration-Based Models of Design Process, Pittsburgh, 1992, pp. 1-21.