Discovery and evaluation of design methods in practice: An empirical study

Web platforms and literature on design methods allow
users to search for existing methods based on the method’s
name and stage of use. Little support is provided to assess
whether a method is appropriate for the task at hand and the
context where the method will be applied.
In this explorative study, patterns in searching, selecting,
assessing and exchanging experiences with peers in
professional practice were analyzed across a range of
disciplines. This work reports on our findings from interviews
conducted with practicing engineers and designers.
Several similarities in the way practitioners find, select and
assess new methods were found and interesting differences
were identified for the practices in exchanging experiences with
peers.
In this work, we present the findings of our interview study
along with directions for future work to better understand
design processes in professional practice.