This paper focuses on the relationships between complex problems, sense-making, and exploration. We argue that we increasingly face complex problems for which we do not yet have effective coping methods. We further argue that, given the nature of these problems, it is useful to explore the role of play and games as effective coping methods. Through play we can make sense of complex phenomena and explore features thereof. Games, and in particular online games, seem to provide interesting features for capturing and dealing with complex problems. However, we argue that the games are not yet matured enough to fit the requirements for coping with specific professional settings. This leads us to propose a framework that includes games as one of four mechanisms. The framework is tested in a professional case.

The deployment of complex systems is an exponential function of their conceptual complexity. This rule-of-thumb is derived from our experience with the design and deployment of complex mechatronic systems (vehicles and aerospace); concurrent engineering systems (manufacturing of complex assemblies) and learning environments for teaching people how to do global, team-based, design-deployment. We have concluded that the limiting variables for team performance are the rate-of-learning they can “collectively” sustain and their ability to reuse-prior-experience when starting new projects. Net performance is then a function of the teams baseline knowledge-sharing capability and rate of learning. Both variables are, in turn, a function of their willingness to communicate and the technical infrastructure available to support communication. In this “position paper” we wish to share some of the key experiences that have lead to this proposition and our research agenda.

We are perpetually challenged to improve engineering products and services. In doing so, there is a fundamental trade-off between resource allocation to the experts and to the rest of us. Corporations and Universities tend to invest most heavily in specialized resources for their technical experts and project leaders while neglecting resources for their line engineers and students. First we present results of a corporate field study that examined how new-product-development process-experts were used to accelerate development. We then introduce results from the implementation of peer-to-peer communication services designed to accelerate product development while minimizing the development teams dependence on experts.

For the past fifteen years researchers at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University have focused on two fundamental questions: what are designers doing, thinking, and experiencing when they do design and how can we improve their performance? One research methodology that has been effective in helping answer these questions is the "observe-analyse-intervene" method pioneered by John Tang [Tang 1989]. This iterative approach emphasises the development of interventions as a way to perturb a system and test underlying assumptions. Illustrated in figure 1, a design activity is observed and recorded in the observation phase. In the next phase, the new data is analysed and interpreted. In the third phase, this interpretation informs the design of new tools and methods that will impact the behaviour observed in the initial design activity. The cycle is then repeated. Each iteration deepens our understanding of the design activity, resulting in a refinement or replacement of the tools and methods that were earlier introduced.

Numerous empirical studies of various product development processes are initiated each year. Most of these rely on vocabularies that have merged partly within their local research community. Though there are some commonalties in the vocabularies applied the ‘incompatibilities’ between the studies are astonishing. In this paper we shall discuss the advantage of applying an ontological approach to overcome some of the difficulties, and also, present a tentative ontology. An ontology can be defined as the specification of a conceptualization. That is, an ontology is a description of the objects, concepts, entities, and relationships that can exist in some area of interest. The goal is to communicate consistently in a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory.

Because of the current and future importance of the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in education and research, our team has been working on transferring this technology to the college classroom. In this paper we present the initial findings of a case study in which two years of cutting-edge AFM research was transferred to the college classroom in the form of a one-semester course. The course was developed before the research was completed and published in final form. While, the course centered on the re-creation and explanation of the most recent advances in building high-throughput AFMs, it also implemented and assessed the use of two online AFMs. Student response to the initial course offering, its content, and the tools used, was very positive. The students rated the course above the department average on 14 of the 15 survey metrics and claimed that the teaching method would help them remember more than other classes (average 8 on a ten-point scale. N=24). As a result of the course, several students have shown interest in pursuing work and research in this field. These results indicate that the course has successfully broadened the horizons of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Nevada Reno, which had no microtechnology or AFM course offering prior to this work. It has also demonstrated the potential of using the AFM as the center focus of a MEMS/Nano-technology course. Finally, this case study may serve as a model for future technology transfer to the classroom by Ph.D. candidates who have not fully completed their technical research

The grades assigned at quarterly intervals to 10 projects in a project-based mechatronics systems design class named ME210 were plotted alongside the number of distinct noun phrases (NPs) in the project reports. It was found that the grades were strongly associated (gamma>0.7) with the number of distinct NPs, while they were weakly associated with other variables, like readability and the number of words. These initial results open up a new set of ways for assessing design work and, as a consequence, improving the performance of students doing design tasks

Our goal is to train a team of student mechanical engineers such that during the design phase of new product development, they consistently outperform professional teams of experienced engineers. If the cost of such a training is low in comparison to that of other options, then its relative value will be high. Consequently, the tools and methods used in the training will constitute a pragmatic theory of high performance design management. The paper describes an ongoing project to develop the managerial framework for such a training. We begin by adapting the simulation model of an engineering organization to a project-based design class. We hypothesize that it is possible to simulate these classes with at least the same degree of realism as current computer simulations of engineering organizations. To illustrate the potential impact of this approach on design performance, we present preliminary result from the computer simulation study of ME210. ME210, Mechatronic Systems Design, is a graduate-level course based on industry-sponsored projects. Students, in three-person teams, work on one project for nine months. The inputs to the simulation program are such variables as the class organizational structure, physical layout, team composition, and communication technologies. The principal output is the schedule-performance achieved by each team and the class as a whole. While we were able to prove the hypothesis, the results demonstrated the need for theories of learning processes that are specific to project-based classes.