Evaluating a Functional Basis

Abstract

One of the motivations to develop a standard language to describe the functions of a product or artifact is to facilitate the indexing, search and retrieval of design knowledge. Taxonomies describing a standard language of functions have been developed by a number of researchers. This paper describes an empirical study carried out to evaluate two such taxonomies for their suitability to indexing design knowledge. The results of eighteen interviews conducted into two separate aerospace companies in the UK are presented. Engineering designers were asked to describe the function of assemblies or components that they were familiar with. In total, 207 descriptions of functions were collected. These descriptions have been analysed and compared to the two taxonomies evaluated. This paper describes the findings from these studies and draws conclusions on the suitability of these taxonomies for indexing design knowledge.