Foundations for designing decision-based design processes

A necessary ingredient in increasing efficiency and effectiveness of human designers is the modeling and improvement of design processes, preferably on a computer, in a manner that facilitates analysis and debugging of processes and products before implementation. This also fosters understanding of the process of designing in a form which can be used to educate other (prospective) designers.;In this dissertation, Decision-Based Design is the foundational paradigm for designing and the creation of design methods. Two fundamental equations which model Decision-Based Design are derived. It is shown how design processes are modeled using a set of fundamental entities. Of these entities, Phase, Event, Task, Decision and System Support Problems are used to model design processes embodying hierarchical time lines of systems to be designed. The design of such Support Problems is equivalent to the design of design processes. Three types of designs are distinguished, namely, the original, adaptive and variant design of Support Problems. The quality of Support Problems is modeled and improved using Suh's independence and information content axioms coupled with Taguchi's signal to noise ratio.;The issues involved are explained using two examples. One involves the complex design of a frigate. The other concerns the design of a Decision Support Problem for the design of a filter network and is used for creating an understanding of the principles. The prototype of a computer system for designing Support Problems is discussed.