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Schemes for Engineers in Research and Development
Global Research Awards: Profiles
Dr Peter Matthews - Durham University
Dr Matthews has a track record of investigating how
engineering designers use decision support tools
during the design process. Most interestingly, where
the computer based support tool suggests a course of
action with certainty, the engineer’s uncertainty of
the domain means that they will not always follow
the computer’s advice. During a recent period spent
focusing on this area at Durham’s Institute of
Advanced Study, it became clear that this
uncertainty is of fundamental importance to the
creative process through the introduction of a
‘creative friction’.
This led Dr Matthews to investigate the nature of
this uncertainty and how it might change with
experience gained as a result of designers
interacting with each other. To do so, he needed to
develop an agent based computer model for the
conceptual design process. This addition of
uncertainty to the agents would be a novel approach
to agent based systems. The Global Research Award
provided the support for him to spend 5 months at
the University of Amsterdam’s Intelligent Systems
Laboratory, a thriving research group investigating
agent based learning.
“The Academy’s support through the Global
Research Award provided exceptional terms: normally
funding bodies do not provide support for the
researcher’s family, however the Award not only
provided support for travel and living costs but
also generously provided for the additional costs
incurred due to the more expensive nursery fees for
our two year old daughter.”
During Dr Matthews’ stay, he was able to completely
focus on developing the computer code base that
provided a computational laboratory for
investigating agent based uncertainty and how this
can be used to make decisions. Ultimately, it is
intended to be able to mesh with other computational
design tools, learning where the designer has
certainty (and therefore is unlikely to represent a
creative opportunity) and where the designer is
uncertain (and therefore presents a healthy
opportunity for creativity in the design process).
By understanding where the uncertainty lies within a
process, other creativity support systems can
automatically be called upon or anticipated.
“By being able to visit a group for a long time
ensured that strong relationships were forged. These
were not just with the host group, but also with
some of their key collaborators. We have already
identified some further areas of common interest,
and I will be returning to these groups for future
short but focused meetings to progress these ideas.”
As a result of the long period of concentrated work,
a series of journal articles has been planned. These
will be co-authored with various members of the
groups Dr Matthews visited during his stay.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Amsterdam. It
was a unique opportunity, not only from a
professional perspective, but it was an enriching
personal experience.”
Dr Peter Matthews, MA (Cantab), DipCS, PhD,
MIET, FRSA
Lecturer in Design Informatics
School of Engineering
Durham University
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