Background: Communication is fundamental to the success of engineered systems, enabling interactions between the system's stakeholders. Systems engineering, an integrative discipline on which the contributions of many disciplines are evaluated against each other, may particularly benefit from research in communication methods. Specifically, storytelling may be beneficial to engineers because it enables sense-making. Research into storytelling is conducted to identify storytelling metrics that could be useful in engineering communication, specifically engineering case studies. Literature review: Although storytelling has been identified in past research as possibly useful to Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and software requirement writing, a rigorous study of the use of storytelling elements in systems engineering communication has not been performed. Research question: How are storytelling elements currently being applied in engineering case studies? Research methodology: Twelve interdisciplinary metrics from storytelling, content analysis, and engineering are identified from the literature and used to characterize a collection of 48 NASA case studies. The values of the metrics for each case study are determined and analyzed using statistical and content analyses. Results and discussion: Analysis of the 12 metrics indicates that the case study design region with a historical backstory structure, climactic plot structure, and early points of attack is most frequently used by designers. Conclusions: The analysis indicates that certain storytelling elements applied in engineering case studies are used more frequently. Further work is needed to leverage the metrics as design variables in engineering case study writing.

中文翻译：

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识别多学科指标以分析NASA案例研究

背景：交流对于工程系统的成功至关重要，它使系统的利益相关者之间能够进行交互。系统工程是一门综合学科，在该学科上许多学科的贡献是相互评价的，它可能特别受益于通信方法的研究。具体来说，讲故事可能对工程师有益，因为讲故事可以使人产生感官。进行讲故事的研究是为了确定讲故事的指标，这些指标可能对工程交流特别是工程案例研究有用。文献评论： 尽管在过去的研究中已经说出叙事对基于模型的系统工程（MBSE）和软件需求编写可能有用，但是还没有对叙事元素在系统工程通信中的使用进行严格的研究。 研究问题： 当前在工程案例研究中如何应用叙事元素？ 研究方法论：从文献中确定了十二个讲故事，内容分析和工程学的跨学科指标，并用于表征48个NASA案例研究的集合。使用统计和内容分析确定并分析每个案例研究的指标值。结果和讨论： 对这12个指标的分析表明，具有历史背景结构，气候情节结构和早期攻击点的案例研究设计区域是设计人员最常使用的区域。 结论：分析表明，在工程案例研究中应用的某些叙事元素被更频繁地使用。在工程案例研究的写作中，需要做更多的工作来利用指标作为设计变量。