Metaphor is a fundamental heuristic supporting cognitive and communicative requirements in design problem solving. This reasoning mechanism helps structure how architects reason about problems, and ...how they approach design situations from novel perspectives. This paper investigated empirically the use of metaphors during the conceptual front edge design, known as the most creative stage of the process. Figurative phenomena were analyzed in their original context of occurrence. Emerging metaphorical expressions generated during communication interactions maintained by sixty architects were identified and examined based on protocol analysis approach. Metaphors were further categorized according to main experiential domains at different levels of detail, as well as in terms of image and conceptual descriptions. The study contributed to gain a deeper insight into the rhetorical potential of metaphor during design problem solving, and to strengthen its centrality in architecture.
In the last few decades, increasing attention has been given to gender issues in urban design. However, research on the urban environment continues to show large gender inequalities, which are ...especially evident when studying the use and enjoyment of the public space. This study aims to identify predominant patterns of use in public places and to explore the possible existence of traditional gender roles in the urban space. The study uses, three public spaces in the city of Barcelona as a case study, an innovative combination of systematic observation techniques and network analysis procedures. Variables collected by EXOdES, a dedicated software analysis tool for systematic observation, are represented as nodes of a network system and analyzed using network analysis tools. Findings confirmed that, in spite of the progressive consolidation of feminist urbanism, uses in the public realm resulting from traditional gender roles remained explicitly recognizable. Whereas women’s occupation of space was related to playground and resting areas, generally involving care activities concerned with children or elderly people, men were primarily located in resting and sports areas, practicing sports, or participating in leisure activities. These patterns of use were more prone to emerge when users were part of a group than when they were alone. From a gender perspective, a contribution of the study is that it informed about main aspects of the analyzed public spaces reconfirming the existence of traditional roles in society, and the significance of exploring the public space as a key scenario where social features are explicitly exposed. From a methodological perspective, the processing of observational data with network analysis tools proved to be relevant and suitable for dealing with the intricacies of urban place analysis. Compared to more classical approaches and systems, these techniques allowed to identify and interpret complex systems composed of many variables and relationships in a relatively straightforward manner, which turns it into a useful aid for urban designers and architects.
Urban design is a complex problem-solving activity that commonly requires the aid of a variety of methods to support the process and enhance the quality of the outcomes. How to help designers with ...suitable methods to deal with ill-defined urban problems constitutes a major challenge in the urban design domain. In this regard, the use of urban design patterns is considered as a method that can contribute to urban design problem-solving. However, this tool was never investigated to understand its role in the task-related activities that take place during the design process by designers working in a team, and its influence on the creativity of the final design outcome as perceived by urban designers and students. Therefore, an empirical research based on a controlled experiment was carried out to explore the aid provided by design patterns during the conceptual stages of the process. Sixty-three master students working in teams of three were assigned a set of patterns to solve an urban design task. They were requested to use this material to produce as many creative conceptual solutions as possible. At the end of the sessions, they evaluated the creativity of their outcomes, and they completed a questionnaire about the aid afforded by the patterns. The solutions were also assessed by two independent urban designers. The study contributed to gain a better insight into the main design activities derived from the use of patterns as problem-solving tools and to unveil their contribution to urban design. The aid provided by the urban patterns was mainly concerned with task-related activities, and thereafter with team interactions. Overall, the use of patterns was seen to enhance the functionality of the design. Implications for design practice and design education are discussed.
This study aims to support designers in developing transformative solutions in the engineering discipline using the Design-by-Analogy ideation method. Design-by-Analogy involves drawing inspiration ...from the source domain and applying it to the target domain. Based on the conceptual distance between the two domains, analogies are classified as biological—(natural), cross—(distant-engineering), and within—(near-engineering) domain analogies. Real-world scenarios involve designers selecting analogies after seeking them across multiple domains. These selected analogies significantly influence the produced designs. However, the selection criteria of the analogy domain are unexplored in design research. We address this gap by investigating: (a) the influence of analogy domains on their selection frequency; and (b) the relationship between the frequency of selecting analogies from specific domains and the novelty of designs. The experiment involved twenty-six teams of novice product designers, who solved design problems aided by one analogical source from each domain. The results showed that biological analogies were frequently selected. While biological-domain analogies significantly increased the novelty of designs compared to the within-domain ones; no significant difference was found between the biological- and cross-domain analogies, suggesting that middle-domain analogies can be as effective as far-domain ones. The findings can support technological innovation by aiding the development of analogy search databases.
Increasing attention has been paid to understanding expert design behavior to help novice students enhance their knowledge and abilities for their professional development. However, an integrative ...framework must still be created to identify expert-based design behavior. Using an international web-based survey, this study identifies major expert design behaviors, and reports on the development of a unique behavioral multiple scale that measures central behaviors in the design process for assessing design expertise. Considering theoretically grounded behaviors of experts in the design literature, a 29-item scale is formulated for capturing key expert design behaviors based on exploratory factor analysis. Evidence for construct validity and reliability is presented, suggesting seven primary expert diversified behaviors in the design process. Nevertheless, using a structural equation modeling, it is concluded that the behavioral multiple scale represents only six significant behaviors of design expertise. Moreover, a path analysis of this comprehensive framework shows that some behaviors are central, directly related to design expertise (i.e., strategic approach to design complexity and framing of design problems), and act as mediators for other behaviors (i.e., reflection on design problems and solutions, systematically breaking the design into sub-problems, application of conceptual thinking, and reuse of previous solutions). Findings can be implemented by intervention programs in the design studio aiming to support professional development in design education by training students to enhance their expertise.
Creativity is fundamental to design problem-solving. This paper sets out a systematic review of the literature in relation to its role in the architectural design studio in order to identify central ...issues that impact upon this activity. Challenges and best practices in relation to systematic reviews are outlined, and the procedure followed in this context is set out in detail. This involves an iterative evaluation process that resulted in a pool of 17 papers for analysis. Eleven themes emerged in the analysis of the papers, which were organized into five key categories dealing with: pedagogy, cognitive approach, interaction and socialization, information representation, and measuring ideation and creativity. A discussion of these categories contributed to the comparison and connections between the selected papers, and the identification of critical issues and directions for promoting creativity in the architectural design studio.
Fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) and makerspaces are used to transform ideas into tangible products. Used in a design–learning context, they can enhance cognitive and creative skills. Creativity is ...the pivotal ability to produce innovative outcomes in makerspaces, and several studies have attempted to understand the role of makerspaces and creativity in specific fields. However, a comprehensive study offering a holistic view of the contributions of the makerspaces as built environments that foster creativity is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on FabLabs, makerspaces, and creativity to address this research gap. While the review was performed using five major databases, only peer reviewed journal articles were considered. The findings revealed that makerspaces help to develop person, product, physical, and social environments, as well as process aspects of creativity. Moreover, makerspaces induce problem solving, collaborative, and communication skills; they also offer appealing environments and technologies for developing creative solutions to real-life problems. We identified and analysed five major themes dealing with technical skills, technological and environmental elements, STEM learning, and skill development, and elaborated upon their importance for enhancing creativity in FabLab and makerspace environments.
This study deals with the role of mental models in the coordination of team activities during design problem-solving. The work centers on the sharedness of mental models in a design team setting, ...mainly on the interaction between an architect and two clients. A major goal is to gain insight into how modifications in mental models affect coordination, and how sharedness develops through the process. Our focus is to explore, through a case study, the individual contributions of the architect and the clients to coordination of the work process, and how sharedness of the development of the team mental model evolves in the early stage of concept generation. Our claim is that work teams develop a certain degree of sharedness of the mental models of individual team members during information exchange. This team mental model can be insufficient or even wrong, but as long as the team members feel agreement in the team, they coordinate their work on that basis. Thus, sharedness of mental models is believed to be a powerful team asset, especially when it is reached in the earlier phases of the design process. Our findings suggest that in order to attain sharedness among design team members, design activities related to the task mental model should be encouraged, specifically the generation of new ideas and the analysis of solutions. Implications for practice and education are suggested.
Design and design thinking are increasingly being taught across several disciplines—ranging from arts, architecture, and technology and engineering to business schools—where expertise plays a central ...role. A substantial corpus of literature on research in regard to design expert and design expertise has accumulated in the last decades. However, in spite of its importance for design and design education, the topic has remained largely unframed. A major goal of this study was to carry out an assessment of literature through leading interdisciplinary design journals in order to identify main topics and categorize them into thematic patterns concerned with expertise in design. A structured assessment approach based on Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was used over 861 abstracts. The emerging thematic patterns associated with design expertise allowed a categorization at different levels of detail, which included 80, 50, 20, and 12 factors analyses, respectively. The major contribution of the study was to offer a structured assessment of key design literature that enabled to gain a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the thematic patterns in the discussion on design expertise. Implications of the identified key factors for design education are discussed.
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