An Information Theoretical Perspective on Performance, Refinement and Cost

Design in general is about increasing the information of the product/system. Therefore it is natural to investigate the design process from an information theoretical point of view. There are basically two (although related) strains of information theory. The first is the information theory of communication. Another strain is the algorithmic theory of information. In this paper the design process is described as a information transformation process, where an initial set of requirements are transformed to a system specification. Performance and cost are both a functions of complexity and refinement, that can be expressed in information theoretical terms. The information theoretical model is demonstrated on examples. The model has implications for the balance between number of design parameters, and the degree of convergence in design optimization. Furthermore, the relationship between concept refinement and design space expansion can be viewed in information theoretical terms.