Design science for engineering design practice

摘要

It is generally known that practising engineering designers tend towards traditional intuitive ways of using the knowledge, which they have acquired both from theory and (more and more in the course of time) from practice. Some teachers also prefer to use these approaches especially when teaching engineering design subjects that directly relate to industrial practice. The more systematic (or often in fact only empirical or mnemonic) ways are recommended or even strongly demanded by teachers who wish to explain engineering design procedures in a rational manner. Practising engineering designers in general and some teachers "do not like" these approaches because of their "rigidity", which they find to be incompatible with their own creativity. The question is, how should this situation be dealt with in order to obtain better results both in education and practice.