Optioneering

What Is Optioneering?

Optioneering involves creating design options that are visibly related to their parameters. It can be used to explore a design space quickly when you might not know what metrics you want to optimize for yet.

After performing optioneering methods, the designer can sort and filter design variants to identify which options fit their design goals.

The image above illustrates a simplified example of optioneering. Imagine you want to mix a cocktail drink. You can gather some possible ingredients and mix them in different measures. A visual way of representing and exploring alternatives is an optioneering graph. There, you can align all of the ingredients (variables) and, by varying their quanitities, you can show the different possible outputs.

Advantages

• Gives you a direct relation between variables (or input) and design results (or output).

• Helps you to define the design span that you want to explore.

• Enables the user to change variables manually.

Going Back to Architecture

In the AEC industry, you have variables instead of ingredients and design options instead of cocktails - but the concept remains the same.