Effects of Framing on Tradespace Exploration Decision-Making for Vehicle Design

Tradespace exploration (TSE) describes the activity occurring early in the design process through which stakeholders explore a broad solution space in search of more-optimal alternatives. In doing so, these stakeholders attempt to maximize the utility inherent in the chosen solution while understanding the tradeoffs and compromises that may be required to find an acceptable solution. In the field of vehicle design, tradespaces are often comprised of vast amounts of alternatives which increases the complexity of the decision-making process. Additionally, the number of stakeholders has grown, as decision-makers seek to include more variety in both perspectives and expertise. As such, decision-making stakeholders can often find themselves working at odds and attempting to maximize vastly different objectives in the process. One way to rectify these contrasting viewpoints can be to intentionally introduce a group framing prior to the start of decision making. In this experiment, teams of students were presented with a TSE problem represented by morphological matrices and utility functions and asked to find the most optimal vehicle configuration from the constituent alternatives. Students worked through three problems in three conditions, simulating a conventional team decision-making approach, an antagonistic approach, and a group-framed collaborative approach.