Comparative Analysis of Expert and Novice Design based on a Digital Triplet-Based Design Process Analysis Method

With the aging and retirement of expert designers, there is a growing need in design workplaces to transfer their knowledge and expertise to novice designers. To facilitate such knowledge transfer effectively, it is essential to analyze and identify the knowledge and expertise that novices have yet to acquire. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a design process analysis method that extends existing approaches based on the concept of the Digital Triplet(D3), which focuses on the problem-solving process of engineers to externalize and formalize the designer’s knowledge and expertise. The proposed method explicit and structure a designer’s knowledge and expertise through two components: (1) Parameter Network, which graphically express the parameters of the product and the relationships between them as perceived by the designer, and (2) Process modeling language for D3(PD3), which describes the designer’s decision-making and the operation of digital tools within the product design process based on D3. Subsequently, the proposed method is applied to analyze and compare the design processes of expert and novice designers in the context of pump impeller design. The comparative analysis successfully identifies the knowledge and expertise not possessed by novice designers, along with their distinguishing characteristics.