ABSTRACT
This paper is primarily about methodological issues that govern the suitability, planning, preparation, and the recommended application of case studies in design reviews (design review, in this sense, suggests the process and the decision-making of the design evaluation). The relationship of design-evaluation (evaluation of simulated alternatives), to professional activities and post-occupancy evaluation (evaluation of the built solution) is presented. The comparison between various research strategies, such as, experiments, surveys, and case studies are presented in order to explain the research questions that these strategies are likely to answer. This is expected to give the researcher an idea when case studies are suitable as a research strategy. A classification of case studies is introduced, ranging from descriptive to the explanatory types, in order to explain the effort and direction involved. The last section of the paper is concerned with the case study research design, which includes case study plan, the recommended data collection, and training.
