Aims and Scope of JIDPS: Coping with the Challenges in Transdisciplinary Design

In my last editorial for Vol 18 No 4 of the journal (Zeng, 2014), the Aims and Scope of Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science (JIDPS) were summarized into a framework of three levels covering the research findings related to transdisciplinary notions of design and process: 1) understanding of design and process crossing boundaries of natural, human, and built environments, 2) principles, methods, and tools, and 3) applications of design and process science to engineering and social problems. In the last issue, three papers respectively addressing these issues were included. A transdisciplinary design is a design that requires knowledge, expertise, experiences, and tools from different disciplines. There are many challenges in conducting a transdisciplinary design project. First, it is usually difficult for experts from different domains to communicate smoothly due to the different terminology and models that different domains use to describe the world. Second, due to the lack of an all-inclusive brain, the acquisition of relevant knowledge distributed in different domains can be a lengthy process. Third, the solution direction cannot be well defined before enough knowledge has been obtained while the necessary domain knowledge cannot be effectively and efficiently obtained before a solution direction has been well defined. This issue will look into the concept of transdisciplinary design and associated methodologies and applications. The first paper, titled “Environment-Based Design (EBD): a methodology for transdisciplinary design” by Zeng introduces a methodology to deal with transdisciplinary design problems. In the EBD methodology (Zeng, 2011), design is an activity that aims to change an existing environment to a desired one by creating a new artefact into the existing environment. As a result, design starts from the environment, serves the environment, and changes the environment. The transdisciplinary nature of a design can thus be taken into account through different kinds of environment and environment interactions across different disciplines. The EBD methodology includes three interdependent activities: environment analysis, conflict identification, and solution generation. Throughout the entire design process, any newly generated design solution will be viewed as an environment component for the succeeding design activities. The design process continues until no more undesired conflict exists in the environment. A transdisciplinary design problem can be decomposed through the partitioning of the environment implied in the problem description. Underlying the EBD methodology is a question strategy based on semantic analysis enabled by the Recursive Object Model (ROM). The questions generated throughout the design process will guide designers to collect information from different domains and to integrate the information into the present design context. In addition, this paper also proposes four criteria