In last years research and innovation on Engineering Design showed a growing interest on product conceptual design. The purpose of this study is to investigate engineers and designers preferences on resources, tools and methods applied at conceptual design stage, according to state of the art of computer-aided conceptual design tools. Professional designers and engineers participated on this research. A mixed method study with questionnaire and interviews was applied for this research. Results confirmed main hypotheses and also showed interesting results.

1. METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY
A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez, M.M. Espinosa
UNED-ETSII (Ingeniería del Diseño)
DYNA, July 2015, vol. 90, no. 4, p.380-385. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6036/7212

2. INTRODUCTION
Conceptual design is one of the most important stages of industrial product development
process:
“The most influencing design stage” (Horváth, 2005).
“The phase where engineering science, practical knowledge, production methods and the
commercial topics need to join and where the most important decisions are taken, with a
significant impact in the product cost, reliability and final features” (French, 1985).
Being the importance of conceptual design process, it is evident that it must be used all
available means and resources to help developing better and more innovative concept
design solutions.
Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142
M. J. French, Conceptual design for engineers. Springer, 1985
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

3. INTRODUCTION (II)
Methods and resources:
Information: is one of the main resources that support to the conceptual design process, which is mainly fed
from designers knowledge, information gathered by other product development process actors (marketing,
manufacture, packing and distribution), as well as the one that was previously registered.
Visual tools (schemes, mind maps, and mainly sketches) its use is understood as one of the most effective
problem solving mental processes.
Idea generation support means: external (images, photographs, schemes, graphics, mock-ups, any objects
(Brereton, 2000) and mainly sketches (Goel ,1995) (Ferguson,1994).
Creative methods:. Intuitive (Brainstorming) , logical (TRIZ) as well as visual thinking-based (Mind maps,
Brainsketching)
Use of computers: scarce use of computer systems at this design stage. Despite of it, efforts are made from
various approaches [12] [2] . Avaliable commercial specific applications, mainly focused on geometric
modeling.
M. Brereton and B. McGarry, “An observational study of how objects support engineering design thinking and communication: implications for the
design of tangible media,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2000, pp. 217–224.
V. Goel, Sketches of thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995.
E. Ferguson, “Engineering and the Mind’s Eye,” The MIT press, 1994W. Hsu and B. Liu, “Conceptual design: issues and challenges,” Computer-Aided
Design., vol. 32, no. 14, pp. 849–850, 2000.
Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

4. STUDY ABOUT METHODS AND RESOURCES FOR CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
our goal:
to study design professional´s preferences on methods, means and resources for conceptual design process.
By a questionnaire made up of 23 questions related to the following topics:
· Interviewed designers and engineers information
· Conceptual design process.
· Conceptual design process support means·
· Use of creative methods.
· Idea generation support resources·
· Creative stimuli resources·
· Conceptual design/design reuse knowledge management
Two groups for this study:
· Design engineers
· Industrial designers
Horváth, “On some crucial issues of computer support of conceptual design,” in Product Engineering, Springer, 2005, pp. 123–142
M. J. French, Conceptual design for engineers. Springer, 1985
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

5. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
UK
Korea
USA
Argentina
Uganda
Italy
Spain
Respondent professional´s profile
Experience of respondent professionals
Countries

6. RESULTS
importance of conceptual design process
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

7. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Time spent on conceptual design (percentage
related on whole development process)
(most time consuming: concept evaluation
(61% of whole conceptual design stage time)
followed by idea generation (28% of whole
conceptual design stage time).
Conceptual Detail Verification/test Production
Problem definition
Idea generation
Idea selection
Concept evaluation

8. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Number of iterations applied in the
conceptual design process
Average of generated ideas

9. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Stackeholder implication on the conceptual
design process
user Implication on the process

10. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN SUPPORT RESOURCES
The use of conventional methods
(notebooks and paper sketches) is
preferential compared with computational
applications (computer-aided sketching
and CAD).
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

11. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN SUPPORT RESOURCES
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Use of computer sketching applications is higher for designers, being
more preferential the use of CAD systems for engineers

12. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN SUPPORT RESOURCES
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Is indicated a scarce use of commercial
applications currently available for conceptual
process support, especially at earlier design stages

13. RESULTS
USE OF CREATIVE TOOLS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Most used creative method, for both designers and
engineers was Brainstorming
TRIZ was the least used creative method Visual creative methods were well placed

14. RESULTS
IDEA GENERATION SUPPORT RESOURCES
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Stimuli sources for design solutions and
ideas are almost similar for both engineers
and designers
Resources and tools used at the
idea generation substage are
preferably in paper (notebooks of
notes and sketches) for both
engineers and designers

15. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT/ DESIGN REUSE
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
74 % of respondent completely agreed that conceptual design stage is an
important knowledge source (15 % partially agreed).
62 % of engineers partially uses other designs for his projects and 5 %
reuses them to a great extent
A great amount of the designers starts his projects from scratch (67 %),
other uses old designs (33 %), but none of the respondent designers
highly uses existing designs.

16. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT/ DESIGN REUSE
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
Design information reuse is equally used by designers and engineers. Most
used information by designers is life cycle information as well as of
packaging, eco design, or materials costs

17. RESULTS
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT/ DESIGN REUSE
Filed conceptual design information is mainly individual and for own initiative (50 % of all
respondent), existing centralized systems in some cases (10 % in engineers), but especially
by designers (30 % ) who answered that all conceptual design information is stored by a
centralized system.
The respondent indicating a centralized knowledge management or a knowledge
management at department answered to perform a minor number of iterations in
conceptual design process as well as and minor amount of design ideas generated.
Ideas capture it is a common practice for both engineers and designers:
97% captures ideas ideas at any time. In this case, traditional resources are preferred:
notebook (40 % of the answers) together with any paper or a napkin (23 %).
Most used digital mean is a photography shot with an smartphone (28 %) and less used are
the sketching applications available for mobile devices (9 %).
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa

18. CONCLUSSIONS
METHODS AND TOOLS APPLIED ON CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PROCESS: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY A. Martin-Erro, M. Domínguez , M.M. Espinosa
This study confirms the difference on creative methods application by industrial designers and design
engineers, also showing a prevalence of intuitive creative methods to logical, even between
engineers.
Relevance of visual thinking at earlier design stages was shown.
Conceptual design commercial computer applications, are scarcely used, prevailing traditional means,
mainly at the initial conceptual design phases, where creativity factor plays a more relevant role.
Use of conventional CAD, at the expense of more suited applications for conceptual process, such as
sketching software.
It is confirmed the importance of the knowledge management at the conceptual design phase,
Conceptual design information is mainly treated to individual title. Future optimization ways can be
focusing towards a suitable design knowledge management. One important part is design reuse.