Spanning the complexity chasm: A research approach to move from simple to complex engineering systems

This paper presents a multi-study approach that allows design thinking of complex systems to be studied by triangulating causal controlled lab findings with coded data from more complex products. A case-study illustration of this approach is presented here. During the conceptual design of engineering systems, designers face many cognitive challenges including design fixation, errors in their mental models and the Sunk Cost Effect. These factors need to be mitigated for the generation of effective ideas. Understanding the effects of these challenges in a realistic and complex engineering system is especially difficult due to a variety of factors influencing the results. Studying the design of such systems in a controlled environment is extremely challenging due to the scale and complexity of such systems and the time needed to design the systems. Considering said challenges, this paper presents a mixed method approach for studying the design thinking of complex engineering systems. This approach includes a controlled experiment with a simple system and a qualitative cognitive-artifacts study on more complex engineering systems followed by the triangulation of results. The triangulated results provide more generalizable information for complex system design thinking. This method combines the advantages of quantitative and qualitative study methods, making them more powerful while studying complex engineering systems. This paper illustrates the proposed method further using an illustrative study on the cognitive effects of physical models during the design of engineering systems.