Modelling an ongoing design process utilizing top-down and bottom-up design strategies

2008 ◽  
Vol 223 (5) ◽  
pp. 547-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Fathianathan ◽  
J H Panchal
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Design Process ◽  
New Products ◽  
Dynamic Decision Making ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Computational Environment ◽  
Successful Design ◽  
Product Design Process

The product design process plays a central role in ensuring that new products are realized with improved quality, in a short lead-time and with costs kept to a minimum. It is identified that making decisions dynamically on how the design process should proceed is not trivial. A computational environment that aids dynamic decision making on the design process would be useful in ensuring successful design of new products. A key component of analysing and making decisions on the progression of the design process is a model that captures an ongoing design process. In this paper, an approach to modelling an ongoing design process is proposed based on the use of design nodes. The approach allows an ongoing design process to be modelled that facilitates dynamic decision making on how the design process should progress and accounts for the state of the design problem. The approach allows top-down and bottom-up design strategies to be modelled.

scholarly journals TOP-DOWN OR BOTTOM-UP? EMPLOYING A MIDDLE-GROUND APPROACH IN DESIGNING A UK ACADEMIC WRITING COURSE FOR ADVANCED CHINESE GRADUATES

2020 ◽  
pp. 095
Author(s):  
Ivo Ganchev
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Postgraduate Study ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
The Uk

This article documents the academic writing course design process for advanced Chinese learners aiming to pursue postgraduate degrees in business-related fields at their respective target universities in the UK. Four holders of BA degrees in the social sciences from second tier universities in Beijing were tested, surveyed and observed in detail to design a non-terminal twenty-hour pre-sessional writing course (ten two-hour sessions) to assist in their preparation for postgraduate study. All students held offers from Russell Group universities in the UK and had covered the IELTS requirement (6.5-7.0) for admission there prior to signing up for the EAP course discussed in this paper. The aim of the course is to enhance the students’ academic skills and improve their performance in the following year when they attend UK universities. The course design process is informed by two sets of principles, incorporating both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. The former is framed within an understanding of EAP as academic, rather than language training. The latter is based on needs analysis of student-specific weaknesses explored through the use of a questionnaire, a diagnostic writing test and in-class observations. Both perspectives feed into the course goals and objectives which serve as a basis for the course rationale. Aiming to bridge the gap between Chinese undergraduate and UK postgraduate study, the course combines textbooks with authentic materials and formative with summative assessment. Reflections on major constraints and limitations are provided throughout the process. This documented case of academic writing course design aims to reveal challenges faced by EAP practitioners working with UK and Chinese institutions, and to present a middle ground approach to resolving tensions between top-down and bottom-up pressures in the context of course design for advanced Chinese graduates.

Managing records and archives in a Hong Kong school: a case study

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric C.K. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Record Management ◽  
Records Management ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Content Type

Purpose This study aims to explore the principles and practices for managing records with the lens of functional analysis and knowledge management by using a case study that focuses on the experience of implementing records management at a public high school in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach A single case study is chosen as the research method for this paper. A series of qualitative interviews and documentary analysis were used to collect and triangulate the qualitative data. Findings The results show that the case school adopted a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach to record management, facilitate decision-making and manage knowledge. The school adopted the taxonomy provided by the quality assurance framework as the functional classification in a digital archive in the records management system. Practical implications This study provides a set of taxonomy and a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach to schools for ensuring that accurate information of all school activities is kept and can facilitate an effective and evidence-based, decision-making process. Social implications Identifying taxonomy and management practices for effective documentation in public schools can support planning, assist with organising the continuity of improvement plans and increase reporting and accountability to society. Originality/value This study offers a taxonomy and management approach to the literature of records management and the practices for promoting and improving records management in school.

Top Down or Bottom Up? A Study of Grassroots NGOs’ Approach

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biswambhar Panda
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Advocacy Activity ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
Local Decision Making ◽  
Government Authority

NGOs deploy multiple approaches to achieve their objectives. These may broadly be classified as bottom up and top down. While a bottom-up approach emphasises local decision making, community participation and grassroots mobilisation/movements, the top-down approach focuses on lobbying and bargaining with the decision-making authorities such as government agencies, building up of pressures through various campaign mechanisms, advocacy activities, etc. This article draws insights from the literature and begins with a discussion on approaches undertaken by grassroots NGOs to meet their objectives. At the outset, the article ponders over a set of questions such as whether grassroots NGOs essentially follow a bottom-up approach. If so, why? Do they also intend to establish rapport with the state officials and thereby have say in the decision-making process? If so, how do they pursue it? This article, however, operationalises the bottom-up approach in terms of an array of indicators such as awareness building efforts of NGOs, people's participation in different phases of projects, and people's involvement in creating people's institutions. Similarly, it defines top-down approach on the basis of indicators such as NGOs’ participation in advocacy activity, obtaining support from government authority and obtaining favourable court verdicts. Despite the rhetoric, this article conclusively finds that no grassroots NGO practices either a bottom-up or top-down approach exclusively.

Emergence in Technical Systems (Emergenz in technischen Systemen)

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Rochner ◽  
Christian Müller-Schloer
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Emergent Behavior ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Technical Systems

SummuryThis article briefly reviews systems, which show self-organizational behavior and defines emergence as their central property. Then it tries to contrast emergent behavior, which is a bottom-up process, with the classical top-down design process. In the last section the paper discusses the Observer/Controller concept as a possible solution to this apparent contradiction.

scholarly journals Subjective Importance of a Common Feature Decides Its Consideration in Multi-attribute Decision-making

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyi Wang ◽  
Guibing He
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Shared Information ◽  
Multi Attribute Decision Making ◽  
The Common ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Subjective Importance

One of the interesting research questions in multi-attribute decision-making is what affects the consideration of shared information (i.e., common features) between two alternatives. Previous studies have suggested two approaches (bottom-up and top-down) in finding what characteristics of common features affect their consideration. Two bottom-up factors (salience and interdependence) were found, but no top-down factors were discovered. In the current study, we followed the top-down approach and investigated how subjective importance (SI) of a common feature affects its consideration. In two studies, we consistently found that, on both the general and individual level, the level of consideration increased with the SI of the common feature. This result provided a new explanation for the effect of common feature consideration and its individual difference; it also provided insights in explaining the underlying process of multi-attribute decision making.

scholarly journals It Depends…Different Direct Democratic Instruments and Equality in Europe from 1990 to 2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Geißel ◽  
Anna Krämling ◽  
Lars Paulus
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Research Gaps ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Actual Output ◽  
Cross National

Despite the popularity of direct democracy in recent decades, research on the actual output effects of popular decision-making is rare. This is especially true with regard to equality, where there are at least three major research gaps: 1) a lack of cross-national analyses; 2) insufficient investigation of the differential effects of different direct democratic instruments on equality; and 3) a failure to distinguish between different aspects of equality, i.e., socioeconomic, legal and political equality. This article takes a first step to tackle these shortcomings by looking at all national referenda in European democracies between 1990 and 2015, differentiating between mandatory, bottom-up and top-down referenda. We find that a large majority of successful direct democratic bills—regardless of which instrument is employed—are not related to equality issues. Of the remaining ones, there are generally more successful pro-equality bills than contra-equality ones, but the differences are rather marginal. Mandatory referenda tend to produce pro-equality outputs, but no clear patterns emerge for bottom-up and top-down referenda. Our results offer interesting, preliminary insights to the current debate on direct democracy, pointing to the conclusion that popular decision-making via any type of direct democratic instrument is neither curse nor blessing with regard to equality. Instead, it is necessary to look at other factors such as context conditions or possible indirect effects in order to get a clearer picture of the impacts of direct democracy on equality.

Conceptual Design of A Human-Computer Interface: A Case Study in Design Methodology

1984 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 510-510
Author(s):  
Virginia A. Rappold ◽  
John L. Sibert
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Computer System ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Network Control ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Planning And Scheduling ◽  
State Diagrams

The purpose of this case study was to document and evaluate the application of a top-down design methodology (Foley & van Dam, 1982) to a pre-existing computer system to test the methodology's usefulness as well as to gain insights into the design process itself. System experts advocate design of a system “top-down” instead of “bottom-up” as a way to sequentially examine the complex task of interface design while allowing re-examination of previous steps in that design (Foley, 1981). The study involved a menu-based, mini-computer system designed at Goddard Space Flight Center called the Mission Planning Terminal (MPT). The MPT will be used at Goddard for planning and scheduling of satellite activities through the NASA Network Control Center (NCC). The scheduler/analyst's task includes submitting a schedule of activities for his mission, transmitting it to NCC, and then modifying the returned schedule, if necessary, using the MPT. The top-down design process is distinctly divided into four phases: conceptual, semantic, syntactic, and lexical (Foley, 1981). The first phase, conceptual, consists of defining key application concepts needed by the user. The semantic phases involve defining meanings such as information needed in order to use an object. The syntactic design defines sequences of inputs (similar to English grammar rules) and outputs (the two and three dimensional organization of the display). The last step, lexical design, describes how words in the input/output sequence are formed from the existing hardware input (Foley & van Dam, 1982). The top-down methodology was applied using MPT documentation and interviews with the designers. During this process, it became clear that although a conceptual model of the MPT existed somewhere, it was never recorded. This led to numerous attempts to extract the main conceptual components of the system from the software operations documents which were constantly changed and were often incomplete. Finally, based on preliminary screen designs, state diagrams were constructed to map out components of the system. By characterization of the MPT in this way (using state diagrams), a clearer picture emerged that finally led to understanding the conceptual model. Once the conceptual model was extracted, redesign of the system, using the top-down method, quickly followed. This case study clearly emphasizes the need for a complete and accurate conceptual model if a top-down approach is to be applied. When redesigning an existing system, it frequently becomes necessary to “extract” this model in a bottom-up manner as was the case here.

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