A diary study of information needs and document usage in the engineering domain

Engineering design, despite its technical mechanical and mathematical foundations, is heavily informational. Many authors have used information as the focus of their research; in contrast, our study examined both information needs and document usage by engineers. After reviewing the design decisions behind the diary study; we report on the analysis of the data. We also used the data to generate new ‘document use’ scenarios, and ‘proof of concept’ test of a related software system. As with all research methods, diary studies have a number of strengths and weaknesses so we also provide some reflections on the use of diary studies as a method for examining the engineer's use of documents in the engineering domain.