6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

ief, the drawings, and the manufacturers’ information were examined.
The author identified the initial set of system elements based on initial
interviews and design documents. After the set of system elements were
defined, the first draft of the DSMs was built.
In the second phase of the data collection process, the author showed the
DSMs to the participants and received their comments. The initial DSMs
were modified according to the feedbacks from the designers. The data
collection process was difficult because of the following reasons:
1. Even experienced design professionals like the architect and the
engineers whom the author interviewed had not systematically
thought about all aspects of the design. The participants responded
to the interviews very positively, because these interviews made
them think from a systems point of view.
2. In the previous DSM examples from product and machinery design
field, the researchers had benefited significantly from the
documentation of the participating design organizations. In this
study, such documentation was very limited, if it existed at all. This
probably points out a difficulty of the building design industry in
terms of documenting and guiding processes.
Other observations made about the data collection process are as follows:
1. The data collection process for DSM building was iterative. Deeper
understanding of the system usually resulted in modification of the
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