The optimizing approach requires that the client and designer understand the decision criteria and the relative importance of the desired design outcomes. This is perhaps the most difficult of all of the above design methods to implement. The decision model is based on the cultural knowledge of the decision-makers. It is reflected in their goals, the values by which they make judgments about the design, and the relative importance which they attach to these goals and values. It makes the assumption that the designer can integrate the decision model’s criteria which will eventually decide whether the design is approved and implemented with the design actions which best fulfill those criteria. The designer would then direct the design process—frequently a computer program-- towards trying to identify the optimum solution for that decision model.
The principal advantage of this approach is that it doesn't waste time. It can be specifically directed towards the articulated objectives and priorities as presented by the decision makers. A principal liability is that it is extremely difficult to cause the decision-makers to articulate their goals and values a-priori -- before actually seeing some design alternatives.
Graphical Ontology Browser
- Click on a node to jump to the content of that node
- Pan to see the rest of the graph
- Scroll the mousewheel up and down to zoom in and out
- Rearrange the nodes in the graph by dragging a node to a different position