Metrics to assess design guidance

Heightened sustainability concerns and emerging technologies give building professionals the desire and ability to explore more alternatives for more objectives. As design challenges become more complicated, and as strategies become more advanced, the need and opportunity emerges to measure processes and to compare the guidance afforded. Through literature review and industry observations, we synthesize a comprehensive framework of definitions and metrics. We apply the metrics to an industry case study to illustrate how they help communicate information about challenges, strategies, and explorations present in the domain of energy efficient design. We measure and compare the guidance provided by applying two strategies to one challenge. The ability to measure guidance marks a valuable step for prescribing design process improvement.