Jonathan Cagan

George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Courtesy Appointments, School of Design, Computer Science

Research

Professor Cagan's research focuses on design methods, theory and practice, including computational synthesis, cognitive-based design and interdisciplinary product development. His computational work on design conceptualization and product layout emphasizes computational representation, generation, and exploratory search of the design space. His premise is that computational tools must support a design process modeled by lateral exploration, followed by a focused investigation of one or more good designs. Based on this premise, much of his work has concentrated on stochastic and agent-based search techniques and cognitive mechanisms, and various grammatical representations to model, generate, and move within the design space. The result is a merging between design theory, artificial intelligence, cognition and operations research, giving a unique approach to addressing the conceptual design problem.

Professor Cagan's other area of focus is in user-centered design and integrated product development practice. He works closely with colleagues in industrial design and business in creating new methods for product design that emphasize product identification, strategy, emotion and user-driven realization. He also works closely with psychologists in the area of cognitive-based engineering design, seeking to understand and improve the ways that engineers create new innovations. His work has evolved from a synergistic relationship with industry, having worked with a variety of small and large companies including Navistar/International Truck, Apple, HP, Procter & Gamble, MSA, Respironics, Alcoa, General Motors, Whirlpool, RedZone Robotics, Bayer Material Science, DesignAdvance Systems, and Lubrizol, among others. Professor has also served as an expert witness for intellectual property litigation.

Education

B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Rochester, 1983

M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Rochester, 1985

Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, 1990

Selected Publications

• Boatwright, P. B. H., and J. Cagan, Built to Love - Creating Products That Captivate Customers, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2010.
• Cagan, J., and C. M. Vogel, Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval, Financial Times Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002. Second edition est publication date Sept, 2012.
• Vogel, C. M., J. Cagan and P. B. H. Boatwright, The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products, Wharton School Press/Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005.
• Antonsson, E. K., and J. Cagan, eds., Formal Engineering Design Synthesis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001.
• Orsborn, S., J. Cagan, and P. Boatwright, " A Methodology for Creating a Statistically Derived Shape Grammar Composed of Non-Obvious Shape Chunks", Research in Engineering Design, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 163-180, 2008.
• McCormack, J. P., J. Cagan and C. M. Vogel, "Speaking the Buick Language: Capturing, Understanding, and Exploring Brand Identity with Shape Grammars", Design Studies, Vol. 25, pp. 1-29, 2004.
• Aladahalli, C., J, Cagan, and K. Shimada, "Objective Function Effect Based Pattern Search - Theoretical Framework Inspired by 3D Component Layout," ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 129, No. 3, pp. 243-254, 2007.
• Orsborn, S., J. Cagan and P. Boatwright, "Quantifying Aesthetic Form Preference in a Utility Function," ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 131, 061001-1-10, 2009.
• Tseng, I., J. Moss, J. Cagan, K. Kotovsky, "The role of timing and analogical similarity in the stimulation of idea generation in design," Design Studies, Vol 29, pp. 203-221, 2008.
• Landry, L., and J. Cagan, "Protocol-based Multi-Agent Systems: Examining the Effect of Diversity, Dynamism, and Cooperation in Heuristic Optimization Approaches," ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 133, 021001-1-11, 2011.