Towards a formal understanding of design process: contribution to the development of a general theory of design

This paper tentatively presents a formal representation of design process. It starts with the concepts and definitions to formulate the premises of designing. The extensional representation is used to model knowledge on artefacts. The state transformation approach is introduced to characterise the iterative nature of design. Three non-ordered fundamental design transformations are defined and then formalised using set theory notations. Preliminary case examples are discussed at the end to show the applicability of proposed approach.