Designers' cognition in traditional versus digital media during conceptual design
Author(s)
Advisor
Demirkan, HalimeDate
2001Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Designers depend on representations to externalize their design thoughts. External
representations are usually in the form of sketches (referred to as traditional media) in
architectural design during the conceptual design. There are also attempts to integrate
the use of digital representations into the conceptual design in order to construct a
digital design medium. This thesis aims at gaining an insight on designers’ cognitive
processes while sketching in digital versus traditional media. The analysis of cognitive
processes of designers based on their protocols is necessary to reveal their design
behaviour in both media. An experiment was designed employing six interior
architects (at Bilkent University) solving an interior space planning problem by
changing the design media they work with. In order to encode the design behaviour, a
coding scheme was utilized so that inspecting both the design activity and the
responses to media transition was possible in terms of primitive cognitive actions of
designers. The analyses of the coding scheme constituents, which are namely
segmentation and cognitive action categories enabled a comparative study
demostrating the effect of the use of different media in conceptual design phase. The
results depicted that traditional media had advantages over the digital media such as
supporting perception of visual-spatial features, and organizational relations of the
design, production of alternative solutions and better conception of the design
problem. These results also emerged implications for the computer aid in architectural
design to support the conceptual phase of the design process.