SUMMARY
While design theories provide a foundation for representing and reasoning about design processes, existing design theories do not explicitly include uncertainty considerations or recognize tradeoffs between the design artifact and the design proces s. These limitations prevent the existing theories from adequately describing and explaining observed or proposed design processes. In this thesis, Rational Design Theory is introduced as a quantitative foundation for studying design processes. This new theory is based on a two-level perspective of design decisions in which the interactions between the artifact and the design process decisions are considered. Rational Design Theory consists of a descriptive model of the artifact decision and normative decision analysis applied to the design process decision. The application of decision analysis to design process decisions provides a structured framework for the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of design processes. The quantitative evaluation capabilities are demonstrated in two example problems. In these two examples, Value of Information analysis is investigated as a strategy for deciding when to perform an analysis to gather additional information in support of a choice between two design concepts. Both quantitative examples demonstrate that Value of Information achieves very good results when compared to a more comprehensive decision analysis that allows for a sequence of analyses to be performed.