Co-Evolution of Technology and the Supporting Method Ecosystem

Paper in proceeding, 2025

Traditionally tools and methods in engineering have been developed in response of industry wanting to carry out particular tasks. This means that many new technologies, hit the market, but industry is not ready to deploy them effectively until it has worked out a way to use the technology or been exposed to specific methods. The paper summarizes the current debate on methods in the engineering design community. It advocates for a co-development of tools and methods together with new technologies and for a greater integration of tools and methods with each other in particular around disciplinary boundaries. This requires the active engagement of industry as the ultimate user, the engineers and scientists who develop the technologies, and the engineering design researchers who develop the tools and methods, to develop a mutual understanding of the set of concepts and representations used in different fields and their take on common problems. The paper argues that, instead of looking at methods in isolation, tools and methods should be seen as parts of an ecosystem, where different ideas can be related to each other and methods and tools can build on each other.