Quantification of uncertainty in Sketches

Design Notebooks (DNBs) can be used to assess the information gathering activities, creativity and individual participation within design groups. Moreover DNBs are the communication tools in the overall design process. For communication purposes, DNBs contain information representations (IRs) such as sketches, symbols, text and equations that usually are imprecisely defined. Imprecise or vague IRs may lead to uncertainty in design communication. This work considered the uncertainty in sketches, one of the most widely used IRs in DNBs. The research question of this study is: Can the uncertainty in sketches be quantified? To answer the research question the following specific aims are formulated: identify the type of uncertainty, assess appropriate uncertainty quantification methods and establish a framework to quantify the uncertainty in sketches. The uncertainty in sketches is found to be mainly an epistemic uncertainty and a modified numerical approach was implemented to quantify it. Using the established framework, the uncertainty in sketches has been quantified and further study is recommended to assess its effect on design communication.