This paper presents the initial results from an empirical study of mechanical design engineers. In this study, six engineers were video-taped solving real mechanical design problems. Preliminary analysis of this protocol data has yielded several important findings, including (a) mechanical designers progress from systematic to opportunistic behavior as the design...
An information processing model of the problem-solving
performance of mechanical designers is presented for four design
tasks: conceptual assembly design, layout component design, detail
component design, and catalog selection. These tasks are organized
into six kinds of segments called episodes, which describe the goal
structure of the designer while performing...