the concept of morphological analysis is central to language studies, how can we use it with respect to the design of new types of products and communications, overcoming the classic approach of structuralism semiotics
The term "morphological analysis" is used in several various disciplines to denote the study of structural relationships. For "general morphological analysis" and design theory, you can check out:
"Applications of General Morphological Analysis: From Engineering Design to Policy Analysis" at:
http://www.amg.swemorph.com/pdf/amg-4-1-2015.pdf
Regards,
Tom Ritchey
Swedish Morphological society
Morphological analysis is a method quite used when you have to analyze or decompose the structure or general form of a product into their different constituting shapes. Those shapes may correspond to one or more specific functions of the product. It’s useful then when you have to match, in a structured way, design properties or variables with user’s affective or functional requirements. For instance this is what is done often in Kansei engineering studies.
For a cell phone those shapes can be: top shape, bottom shape, side shape, function button, number buttons, length-width ratio, layout, border or frame, etc. (example taken from: Chan, K. Y., Kwong, C., Dillon, T. & Fung, K. (2011). An intelligent fuzzy regression approach for affective product design that captures nonlinearity and fuzziness. Journal of Engineering Design, 22(8), 523–542.)
A presentation of the method is found in: Belaziz, M., Bouras, A. & Brun, J.-M. (2000). Morphological analysis for product design. Computer-Aided Design, 32(5), 377–388.
The method was created by Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky. See:
Discovery, Invention, Research through the morphological approach, By Fritz Zwicky, MacMillan 1969.
The first serious and significant reference to this can be found in Norris's chapter in the seminal book by Chris Jones in 1963...The conference on Design Methods. Norris wrote about NORRIS, K. W., 1963, The Morphological Approach to Engineering Design 293,296 In Conference on Design Methods (Edited by J. Christopher JONES )
This has been little taken up or followed in the main design research field in recent times. You will find the main reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, Jones book, while important at the time was really about prescriptive methods, whereas the field fairly rapidly moved to understanding what designers actually do rather than telling what the should do. Norris paper falls into the latter category along with most in Jones book.
Secondly design as it is mostly studied in the field is far more rich, varied and complex than that which Norris related do. The simple notion of the major charactersitics of a piece of engineering is now regarded as a fairly minor, even if important, constituent of design, and most stuies would not reveal it to be sufficiently isolated to be amenable to the morphological approach.
Hope this helps. It may not be what yo want to hear, but do come back to me if you think I might be able to help more. good luck
Morphology is used in two ways: (1) as an analytical tool to investigate the composition of an existing product, and (2) as a creative and synthesizing tool for designing a new product. Designing has two major divisions: (a) for artistic designing, with emphasis on appearance and ergonomics, and (b) for engineering designing, with emphasis on the (internal and cross-boundary) workings of a technical product, ref Eder W.E. US-China Educational Review A, April 2013, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 259-280. Prescriptive design methods are mainly applicable to synthesizing engineering products (2b), often include use of a morphological matrix, and are most useful for novel products, or when an intuitive approach does not yield a good solution, refs Eder, W.E. and Hosnedl, S., Design Engineering: A Manual for Enhanced Creativity, Boca Raton: CRC-Press, 2007, and Eder, W.E. and Hosnedl, S., Introduction to Design Engineering: Systematic Creativity and Management, Leiden, NL: CRC Press/Balkema, 2010. The working group around Vladimir Hubka has published 23 case examples of worked conceptual designing, each including an application of a morphological matrix for synthesizing an engineering product (2b), see ref Eder, W.E., ‘Case Example of Systematic Design Engineering – Linear Friction Test Equipment’, paper 1002, in Proc 3rd International Conference on Design Engineering and Science – ICDES 2014, Japan Society for Design Engineering, 31 Aug - 3 Sept 2014, Pilsen, Czech Republic.
Yes, Norris and Zwicky did pioneering work on this subject. Many others have contributed, but I think that our approach is the one based on scientific logic, and a (complete as possible) Theory of Technical Systems, ref Hubka and Eder, Theory of Technical Systems, Berlin/Heidelberg and New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988. Hope my comments help.