Abstract
This paper presents empirical evidence of commonalities across designing that appear to be independent of the designers’ geographical location, expertise, discipline, the specific design task, the size and composition of the design team, and the length of the design session. Our evidence is founded on thirteen highly heterogeneous design case studies that differ along these dimensions but exhibit some commonalities. We analysed the results from protocols of these case studies produced by a variety of researchers, using a method that is based on the FBS framework and is independent of any domain- or situation-specific parameter. We found commonalities across all thirteen case studies, related to the first occurrence of design issues in the design process, and to the continuity and the rate with which design issues are generated. Our findings provide preliminary support for the claim that designing can be studied as a distinct human activity that appears in different expressions but shares the same fundamental characteristics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Asimow M (1962) Introduction to design. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs
Lawson B (1980) How designers think: the design process demystified. Architectural Press, Amsterdam
Dym C (1994) Engineering design: a synthesis of views. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ericsson KA, Simon HA (1993) Protocol analysis: verbal reports as data. MIT Press, Cambridge
Cross N, Christiaans H, Dorst K (1996) Analysing design activity. Wiley, Chichester
Gero JS (2010) Generalizing design cognition research. DTRS8: interpreting design thinking. DAB documents, Sydney, pp 187–198
Gero JS (1990) Design prototypes: a knowledge representation schema for design. AI Mag 11:26–36
Gero JS, Kannengiesser U (2004) The situated function-behaviour-structure framework. Des Stud 25:373–391
Chittaro L, Kumar AN (1998) Reasoning about function and its applications to engineering. Artif Intell Eng 12:331–336
Hubka V, Eder WE (1996) Design science: introduction to the needs, scope and organization of engineering design knowledge. Springer, London
Pahl G, Beitz W (2007) Engineering design: a systematic approach. Springer, Berlin
Gero JS, McNeill T (1998) An approach to the analysis of design protocols. Des Stud 19:21–61
Ullman DG, Dietterich TG, Stauffer LA (1988) A model of the mechanical design process based on empirical data. Artif Intell Eng Des Anal Manuf 2:33–52
Cross N (1982) Designerly ways of knowing. Des Stud 3:221–227
Visser W (2009) Design: one, but in different forms. Des Stud 30:187–223
Acknowledgements
This research is supported in part by grants from the US National Science Foundation grant nos. SBE-0750853, EEC-0934824, CMMI–0926908 and IIS-1002079. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We would like to thank the following for making their data available: Elizabeth Houle, University of Minnesota; Hao Jiang, National University of Singapore; Jeff Kan, Taylors University, Malaysia; Matthew Lammi, Utah State University; Marie Paretti, Virginia Tech; Hsien-Hui Tang, Taiwan University of Science and Technology; Christopher Williams, Virginia Tech; Robert Youmans, University of California at Northridge; Design Theory Research Symposium 7, London; and Studying Professional Software Designers Workshop, Irvine.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gero, J.S., Kannengiesser, U., Pourmohamadi, M. (2014). Commonalities Across Designing: Empirical Results. In: Gero, J. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition '12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9112-0_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9112-0_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9111-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9112-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)