You are here: Home / References / A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept

Paul Ralph and Yair Wand (2009)

A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept

In: Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective, ed. by Kalle Lyytinen, Pericles Loucopoulos, John Mylopoulos & Bill Robinson, pp. 103-136, Berlin, Springer. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (ISBN: 978-3-540-92966-6).

A clear and unambiguous definition of the design concept would be useful for developing a cumulative tradition for research on design. In this article we suggest a formal definition for the concept design and propose a conceptual model linking concepts related to design projects. The definition of design incorporates seven elements: agent, object, environment, goals, primitives, requirements and constraints. The design project conceptual model is based on the view that projects are temporal trajectories of work systems that include human agents who work to design systems for stakeholders, and use resources and tools to accomplish this task. We demonstrate how these two suggestions can be useful by showing that 1) the definition of design can be used to classify design knowledge and 2) the conceptual model can be used to classify design approaches.

Richard's PhD

"The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life." — Norman Cousins, 1954