Building connectivity models in design: Representations and tools to support cognitive preferences

Reasoning about the connectivity within a product is an integral part of many core design activities. Due to the complexity of a product and the sheer number of potential links, designers often overlook vital connections resulting in problems later in the process, leading to errors or costly rework. Product connectivity models, which are essentially graphs, are a promising approach for capturing these links between components in a complex product. The primary visual representation used to create such connectivity models is the Design Structure Matrix (DSM). However, other representations of graphs may be superior for creating connectivity models of products. This paper presents node-link displays as equally valid representations for product connectivity models and reports on an experimental study that investigates whether DSMs or node-link diagrams are more suitable for building such models.