Synthesis is a scheme to generate a possible way the product work. It will also be called as concept design. In the design process a number of concepts will be identified and then the best concept is chosen for further development.

Analysis is once the concept is designed properly to understand the performance of the product system that was designed as per the engineering requirements. This could be for forces, temperature, flow, kinematics, etc. These two stages are intertwined with iterations moving back and forth until a satisfactory design is achieved.

Dear Filippo, that is a very interesting point. I believe Descartes and more recently Polya discuss the point you are making (I think). To me, it all starts with the problem, so as discussed by Aristotle and Pappus, problematical or theoretical analysis can be performed. I could not find the respective counterparts of synthesis in the literature though.

Engineering design is SYNTHESIS.  ANALYSIS is just verification.

Our extensive review shows that the meaning of analysis and synthesis have been used interchangeably, meaning that to some analysis is design and synthesis is verification or the opposite. We looked in many areas of design including engineering design, architectural design, software design literature, etc... We revisited the method of analysis and synthesis in mathematics where it originally appeared as applied to geometry in ancient Greece. The very little that has been left from the works of Aristotle and Pappus shows that their definition follows the former presented here i.e. analysis is design (setting the rules and relationships or axioms) and synthesis is verification of the analysis (whether the solution works)... There are 2 types of analysis (theoretical and problematical) and that is our current understanding of it, however we have very little to evidence that that is the content expressed in ancient times. The work of Polya has been very insightful and also Riemam (Tom Ritchey. "Analysis and Synthesis: On Scientific Method - Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann." Systems Research 8.4 (1991): 21-41) but as a methodology that represents design, there are gaps in the evidence we have collated so far.

@Fillipo Salustri

Fillipo, I agree with you, but I associate what you have said with the work of Polya on "Plausible Reasoning" but I might be incorrect here. For Polya plausible reasoning is when you recognise a pattern from insight... I find this area fabulous and very intricate to do research on, but to mathematicians, this aspect of cognition can be improved through training (even though I have not seen evidence to support that). I disagree with Don that all design should have a breakthrough... Newton in particular is one that used many incremental pieces of evidence to generate his theory (he, apparently, used the method of analysis and synthesis). Einstein is the same... Breakthroughs comes from incremental developments (in my opinion), unless you are lucky enough to step and something by accident or destiny.

Analysis: Given any system, its analysis will show its behaviour.

Synthesis: Given a set of technical requirements,  synthesis will generate the  system that performs as required. The verification of its performance will be made via  math analysis or better yet via testing.

( From Greek -

  analysis :  ana = up, lisis =loosening>

 synthesis: syn = together , tithenai = to place

Hi in design you can make incremental change like you said @Ricardo Codinhoto, and radical when you break the archetype, i.e. The archetype is a two wheel cycle, a new archetype will be a one wheel cycle. The synthesis, i dare too say isn´t only verification. It is a way to narrow your research about the Problematic or situation to change. 

The analysis is a cognitive process to make correlatión, indagación etc... about the facts that the research provide. Is too complex more the system your are working with, and with the synthesis you select specific parts of the system too: Improve, change, innovate whatever you want. I theorise about this from my intuition and my experience. 

I agree with @Filippo Salustri  about the terminology of Analysis and Synthesis, there lot of way too interpret that.

Best regards

Ricardo - I think you need to have a look at Simon (1969); Lawson (1980) and Cross (1982) for some early uses of these two words - specifically in relation to design research (that's how I'm reading your question?).

In particular Lawso's work and then Cross's use of those particular words in relation to the apparent difference in approach taken by scientists and architects in Lawson's studies.

There may be a conflation, however, of problem- and solution- oriented approaches with processes of analysis and synthesis that takes place. There is (that I know of) no formal treatment of them as part of an overall epistemic study - there is simply an assumption that the words can be used in a non-technical sense like this.

In that sense, the words are perhaps used generically to mean roughly what they once did - that analysis is a form of taking apart (not necessarily physically) and synthesis is a process of putting together (again, not necessarily physically).

Like the word design, analysis and synthesis can also refer to both the process and the product - and that doesn't help either !! So, we might go through a stage of analysis and synthesis where the analysis is a division of objects but the synthesis is a combination of actions...

Speaking now as a designer (former architect) I might suggest a slightly different way of looking at it (but one that is most definitely non-academic) - that any iteration of design is necessarily both analytical and synthetical. I would also make no guess at which comes first either !

So here is the first presentation of a third process: hysteresis - the process of iteratively applying analysis and synthesis depending on the history of the process prior to that point.

That means that designers engage in hysterical thinking. (and there is a serious point in there, I promise :) )

At the risk of advertising, this is something we are keen to discuss at the next Design Research Society conference in Brighton next year - so if you make any headway, let us know!

http://www.drs2016.org/additional-themes/

Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies, 3(4), 221–227. doi:10.1016/0142-694X(82)90040-0

Lawson, B. (2005). How designers think (4th ed.). Abingdon: Architectural Press.

Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of rd the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

PS - This is well worth a quick read if you get the chance:

Ritchey, T. (1991). Analysis and Synthesis On Scientific Method - Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann. Systems Research, 8(4), 21–41. doi:10.1002/sres.3850080402

http://www.drs2016.org/additional-themes/

Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but just came across it while searching for discussions in this relation. I am studying reasoning processes in design activity, and my empirical analyses of dialogue between people doing design (idea generation, specifically), show that interactions between what I interpret as abductive and deductive reasoning play a very important in design activity. In relation to the terminology used in this discussion, I see the abductive part of design activity to be closely related to synthesis. I.e. an activity of proposing a function, a product, etc. Deductive reasoning, here perhaps close to analysis, is the simulation and concretisation of whatever proposed 'in' the synthesis, thus enabling to determine (using e.g. experience and knowledge) whether a 'design' has a kind of potential.

Given this, I am happy to read your practice-based explanation, Derek, as my studies also show that synthesis and analysis happens multiple time, even within few sentences of spoken, idea-generation, related dialogue.

Did you make headway on this topic at this years DRS? I couldn't participate, unfortunately.

-synthesis means making a system based on the specifications that you have .

- analysis means evaluating the system and seeing if it works properly (its kind of like reverse engineering ) .