Collaborative Research: Proofing A Basic Systems Engineering Model Through Empirically-Based Cognitive Testing

在竞争日益激烈和复杂的环境中，美国的全球领导地位部分取决于其工程和设计能力。长期以来，系统一直趋向于更大、更复杂。系统工程方法论旨在解决当今的复杂性？美国的工程挑战。目前，只有叙事理论模型涵盖了整个系统工程。由于它们的话语性质，这些模型已被证明难以测试。该项目解决了如何将这些理论模型与定量实验结果进行测试，这些实验结果来自于研究执行系统设计的工程师。这将导致改进的系统工程模型，并用于促进美国的全球领导地位。这个项目的结果形成了对工程系统设计的科学理解的基础，对系统工程实践和教育有直接的影响。它将展示一种新的研究技术，可用于测试其他话语理论模型，并将为系统工程师教育的未来测试奠定基础。描述性的理论模型，旨在捕捉和提高工程系统的设计已经提出，但没有经过测试。该项目的目标是应用将叙事理论模型转换为基于认知的本体的方法，目的是产生允许定量表征和测试的表征。这种方法将话语模型视为有声思考协议的表达。该项目基于一种新开发的技术，通过将这些描述性理论模型转换为功能-行为-结构（FBS）本体（作为通用本体），然后将结果分割和编码，就像它是一个有声思考协议一样。FBS本体是一种高度基础的本体，已被证明在表示工程设计过程方面是有效的。然后，可以将理论模型与通过使用FBS本体分割和编码的有声思考协议进行设计的工程师的设计认知研究获得的结果进行比较。由于理论模型和实验结果的形式相同，现在可以测试理论模型与实验结果的一致性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

America's global leadership depends in part on its engineering and design capabilities in an increasingly competitive and complex environment. Trends have long been toward larger and more complicated systems. Systems engineering methodology is intended to address the complexity of today?s engineering challenges. Currently, there are only narrative theoretical models that cover the entirety of systems engineering. These models have proven difficult to test due to their discursive nature. This project addresses how such theoretical models can be tested against quantitative experimental results derived from studying engineers performing systems design. This will result in improved systems engineering models and used to contribute to America's global leadership. The results of this project form the basis of an increased scientific understanding of engineering systems design with direct implications for systems engineering practice and education. It will demonstrate a novel research technique that can be used to test other discursive theoretical models and will lay the foundation for the future testing of the education of systems engineers.Descriptive theoretical models that aim to capture and enhance engineering systems design have been suggested but not tested. The goal of this project is to apply the approach of converting a narrative theoretical model into a cognitively-based ontology with the aim of producing a representation that allows for quantitative representations and testing. This approach treats the discursive model as the articulation of a think-aloud protocol. This project is based on a newly developed technique of representing such descriptive theoretical models by translating them into the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) ontology, which serves as a common ontology, and then segmenting and coding the result as if it were a think-aloud protocol. The FBS ontology is a highly-grounded ontology that has been shown to be effective in representing the engineering design process. This then allows the theoretical model to be compared with results obtained by studying the design cognition of engineers designing using a think-aloud protocol segmented and coded using the FBS ontology. Since both the theoretical model and the experimental results are in the same form the theoretical model can now be tested for coherence with the experimental results.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.