EAGER/Collaborative Research: Demonstrating the Importance of Research Setting Representativeness in Systems Engineering and Design Research

探索性研究的早期概念资助（EAGER）资助支持对决定研究设置是否足以代表现实世界系统工程和设计情况的因素进行基础研究。设计复杂的工程系统，如关键基础设施、资本密集型项目和国防系统，涉及由数百至数千人组成的大型设计团队，时间跨度长达数十年。该项目解决了理解这种复杂工程系统的设计的基本问题，使用更简单，更短的持续时间，更可控的研究设置。该项目的研究目标是探索研究环境代表性标准的创建和验证，以评估一个研究环境的发现是否和程度可以扩展到其他研究环境。如果成功，这项工作将通过一个严格的方法基础来评估研究环境在多大程度上以及在什么维度上代表了它们真正的对应对象，从而实现更有效的知识聚合，从而改变科学界的研究。该基础将通过改进跨不同方法学视角的研究成果的有效性评估，丰富系统工程和设计界的经验和理论驱动的研究。作为该项目的一个重要组成部分，成果将通过在社区专题会议上的演讲和讲习班向不同的听众传播。传播和社区建设活动将促进围绕从不同的研究环境和方法方法中获得的各种知识的共同标准和共识的必要性的持续对话。这项高风险高回报工作的核心智力贡献是确定研究设置代表性的维度，了解它们如何影响研究的设计和执行，并展示一种方法来产生关于代表性的见解。两项试点研究将探讨航天器设计过程中代表性的不同维度。第一个试点研究将比较真实的航天器设计过程与一个更小的团队在更短的时间内工作的并行设计环境。第二个试点研究将比较一个完全抽象的功能优化博弈和一个更具代表性的博弈，该博弈在优化问题中模拟了航天器的环境和技术依赖关系。试点研究将证明研究环境代表性对设计师行为影响的可行性。潜在的存在是，研究设置的代表性是不切实际的表征，这是本项目的主要风险因素。然而，潜在的回报也同样高。如果成功，该项目的结果有望为多方法、多尺度的研究提供基础，使研究人员能够相互解释、评估和建立。不同研究方法的结果。这将改变研究界，并使远远超出当前研究能力的新发现成为可能。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。

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant supports fundamental research into the factors that determine whether a research setting is sufficiently representative of real-world systems engineering and design situations. Designing complex engineering systems such as critical infrastructure, capital-intensive projects, and national defense systems involves large design teams consisting of hundreds to thousands of individuals over timescales reaching into decades. This project addresses the fundamental issue of understanding the design of such complex engineering systems using simpler, shorter-duration, and more controlled research settings. The research objective of this project is to explore the creation and validation of standards for research setting representativeness to assess whether and the extent to which findings from one research setting can be extend to others. If successful, this work will transform research in the community by enabling more efficient knowledge aggregation through a rigorous methodological foundation for assessing how well, and in what dimensions, research settings represent their real counterparts. This foundation will enrich empirical and theory-driven research within the systems engineering and design community by improving validity assessment of research outcomes across diverse methodological perspectives. As a crucial component of this project, results will be disseminated to diverse audience through presentations and workshops at community-specific conferences. Dissemination and community-building activities will foster an ongoing conversation around the need for shared standards and consensus for the kinds of knowledge to be gained from diverse research settings and methodological approaches. The core intellectual contributions of this high-risk high-reward work are to identify dimensions of research setting representativeness, understand how they impact design and execution of research studies, and demonstrate a methodology to generate insights regarding representativeness. Two pilot studies will probe varying dimensions of representativeness for a spacecraft design process. The first pilot study will compare the real spacecraft design process to a concurrent design environment with a smaller team working on a shorter timescale. The second pilot study will compare a fully abstracted function optimization game to a more representative game that models the context and technical dependencies of a spacecraft in the optimization problem. The pilot studies will demonstrate the viability of studying the effects of research setting representativeness on designer behaviors. The potential exists that research setting representativeness is impractical to characterize well, which is a principal risk factor for this project. However, the potential reward is equally high. If successful, results from this project are expected to provide the foundation of multi-method, multi-scale research, allowing researchers to interpret, evaluate, and build on each other?s results across different research methodologies. This would transform the research community and enable new discoveries that far exceed current research capabilities.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.