An anchoring adjustment process model for redesign

This paper presents an 'anchoring and adjustment' design process model. The model was developed specifically to describe the designers' approaches to redesign. Redesign processes are characterized by the reworking or reuse of whole or parts of previous design solutions to generate new product designs. As a result, the 'starting points' for redesign processes are collections of selected solution ideas at varying levels of detail, e.g. components, whole working devices and abstract solution principles. These varied starting points are in contrast to the uniformly detailed, conceptual designs that are specified as the output of the starting phase of traditional, top-down process models. Hence, the latter models do not provide accurate descriptions of redesign processes and, therefore, cannot be used to facilitate the efficient completion of redesign tasks. The anchoring and adjustment model provides an accurate description of the redesign process. This paper presents the details from one of the case studies used to verify the mismatch between existing models and actual redesign activities, and in turn, to verify the accuracy of the anchoring and adjustment model as a descriptor of the characteristic properties identified for redesign activities.