Carlos,

I think I'm getting tripped up on your use of "formal" and "method". To my mind, formal refers to notions like "mathematical" and "logical demonstration", which I think is consistent with the examples of axiomatic design, TRIZ, and integral design that you gave in your original post. A method is "A well-specified repeatable procedure for doing something: an ordered sequence of goal-directed operations" (Bunge, 2003, p. 180).

Substituting "idea-generation" for "design" does not particularly help. The distinction you are making between "formal" methods and "non-formal" or "informal" methods, is still not very clear to me, for example, Hanington & Martin (2012) list both brainstorming (formal?) and card sorting (non-formal?) in their book 'Universal Methods of Design'.

It seems to me that, following your description, if you can name it, then it's a formal design method. But this is not consistent with, for example, Simon's (1996) description of the science of design as “a body of intellectually tough, analytic, partly formalisable, partly empirical, teachable doctrines about the design process” (p. 113). Blessing and Chakrabarti (2009, p. 3) give examples of formal design theories and frameworks consistent Simon's description: Altschuller’s TRIZ (Altschuller 1984), Andreasen’s Domain Theory (Andreasen 1980), Braha’s Mathematical Theory of Design (Braha and Maimon 1998), GEMS of SAPPhIRE Model (Srinivasan and Chakrabarti 2008a; Srinivasan and Chakrabarti 2008b), Gero’s Function-Behaviour-Structure Framework (Gero 1990; Gero and Kannengiesser 2002), Hatchuel and Weil’s CK-Theory (Hatchuel and Weil 2003; Hatchuel and Weil 2009), Hubka’s and Eder’s Theory of Technical Systems (Hubka and Eder 1988), Lossack’s Domain-Independent Design Theory (Lossack 2006) based on Grabowski’s Universal Design Theory (Grabowski et al. 1998), Roozenburg’s and Eekels’ Logic of Design (Roozenburg and Eekels 1995), Smithers’ KLDE-Theory (Smithers 1998), Axiomatic Design (Suh 1998), Tomiyama’s Theory of Synthesis (Takeda et al. 1999; Tomiyama et al. 2002), Yoshikawa’s General Design Theory (Yoshikawa 1980) and Weber’s CPM-Theory (Weber 2005).

>If I reformulate the question to "formal idea-generation methods", what would be the answer?
No

Best,
Luke

Luke Feast, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher in Design

Aalto yliopisto / Aalto University
Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu / School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Muotoilun laitos / Department of design
Helsinki, Finland


Blessing, L. T. M., & Chakrabarti, A. (2009). DRM, a design research methodology. Dordrecht; London: Springer.

Bunge, M. (2003). Philosophical dictionary. Amherst, New York.: Prometheus Books.

Hanington, B., & Martin, B. (2012). Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions: Rockport Publishers.

Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.


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