Problem decomposition: the key to Agile sprints in Design Research

In design research, parallelization and anticipation of tasks are crucial to having an effective impact on industry and society. In practice, however, parallelization and anticipation are difficult due to high inter-dependency among research problems and design supports. This paper proposes a framework to use the Design Structure Matrix combined with Axiomatic Design to isolate research problems and their design supports. This modular independence is an important building block to plan for quick and parallel agile design research “sprints”. The application of the approach is illustrated through two practical examples. The results highlight the importance to control a limited number of interfaces to work “agile” in design research without wasteful rework.