The heat transfer from the combustion gases to the cylinder walls inside a spark ignition engine is a key factor in an engine's design, due to its influence on the engine's efficiency, power and emissions. Therefore a lot of research has been conducted in order to accurately model the heat transfer, for engine design and optimization purposes. These models have been found to provide inaccurate predictions for fuels which have significantly different gas properties compared to traditional fossil fuels. This indicates that the models either do not properly include gas properties, or are missing some important properties in their formulation. In order to construct a general ("fuel-independent") heat transfer model, new measurements need to be executed, with multiple fuels that have different properties. Designing such an experiment requires a thorough understanding of the factors influencing the heat transfer and their interactions. In this paper a literature review is presented of heat transfer measurements in spark ignition engines in order to investigate the effect of the engine factors on the heat transfer. Based on this review, a root cause analysis is conducted to identify the independent factors that affect heat transfer. These factors are then used to set up two experiments according to a Design of Experiments methodology that allows the investigation of the effect of different gas properties and engine settings on the heat transfer in a consistent way. The results of these measurements for motored operation are discussed in [1] and for fired operation in a companion paper [2]. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.