Understanding Design Cognition

Abstract

In this chapter I will focus on what we have learned about design cognition from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity. I will try to pick out some consistent patterns that may be discerned in the results of such studies, and to identify issues that are pertinent to the utilisation of the results (for example, in design education) and to further research. I will take a cross-disciplinary, or domain-independent view of the field, and try to integrate results from studies across the various domains of professional design practice. First presented at the international workshop on Knowing and Learning in Design, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1999, and first published as Design Cognition: Results from Protocol and Other Empirical Studies of Design Activity in Design Knowing and Learning: Cognition in Design Education, edited by C M Eastman, W M McCracken and W C Newstetter, Elsevier, Oxford, UK, 2001.