Dear Oliver, Fil, Ranjan and others

thank you for your posts. i do seem to have the fortune 'to get distinguished scholars work' for me.

i am aware that there are quite a number of researchers working on 'design cognition' and i have read some of the research
output including Henrik Gedenryd's impressive doctoral thesis "How designers work". (i wish i could write a thesis as Gedenryd
did).

i have some questions about 'design cognition' in general that i never got a chance to discuss with the researchers in the
field, so i will post them here to push my luck again.

it is my understanding that the research on 'design cognition' is represented by a line of work that is mainly based on
theories and methods of cognitive science. The goal is to develop a theory of designing that is domain independent and to
develop design methods and tools (and recently design education) base on this knowledge/understanding. In the words of Eastman
et al. (2001) the central question is to find out how to ‘develop experimental or experiential constructs and organize data
collection methods that will reveal how designers solve design problems.’ central figures are Herbert Simon and Donald Schön.
(i am also aware that there are different lines of research-articulation on 'designing', but 'design cognition' is used most
often and particularly in the cognitive scientific approach, so please allow us to stay with my understanding for discussion).

i seek help in these questions:

Q1: Product designers, architects, scientists, and engineers (the most often chosen research participants for comparison) are
'social addresses'. Therefore, is it true that when we study how designers think, what we discover will then be
social-culturally mediated cognitive phenomena?

Q2: If answer to Q1 is 'yes', then how might cognitive scientific study on how designers - a social group - think result in a
domain-independent/universal theory of 'design cognition'?

Q3: Having asked Q1+Q2, what I learn from cognitive psychological texts and lectures is how a person thinks is a result of the
interaction of individual, cultural and natural factors. If there is such a general phenomenon as 'design cognition', should
it be meaning an individual-cultivated cognition that can be found in various degree in designers, architects, scientists,
engineers or everyone?

Q4: If answer to Q3 is 'yes', then a theory of 'design cognition' is a theory of thinking style/habit/propensity?

thanks in advance. rosan

Eastman, C., M. McCracken, and W. Newstetter. 2001. Design Knowing and Learning: Cognition in Design Education. Oxford:
Elsevier.




M P Ranjan wrote:

> Dear Rosan
>
> I will not be able to answer all your questions just now because I do
> not have the time since I am working on a presentation that I have to
> deliver in Cardiff on 25th May 2004 and secondly that I do not have all
> the answers to your questions which are very good indeed. I do however
> have a hunch that there is much to be discovered that will make sense as
> we go along this path. Let me explain briefly now and come back later
> with a fuller account.
>
> I have done a few sorties at reading the Peter Gardenfor's book
> "Conceptual Spaces" using the Rabbit style (as Prof John Chris Jones
> says in his introduction to his book "Internet and Everyone", that is,
> hopping from one chapter to the next and back unlike the sheep or goat
> with its own style of reading...) and the same with his other book "how
> Homo became sapiens". From what I gather the new theory that he offers
> differs from the two dominant threads in cognitive psychology, namely
> the symbolic and connectionist modes of representation, while his theory
> proposes a geometric mode of representation that he calls Conceptual
> Spaces. This is exciting. The symbolic (numerical) mode and logic of
> computation, the connectionist mode of associative networks of neurones,
> and the third and new theory of conceptual spaces that uses geometric
> representations (images and visual structures in a topological manner)
> seems to be a very designerly mode which calls for further
> investigation. Looking back at Prof Gui Bonsiepe' division of knowledge
> into three modes of Numeracy, Literacy and Visuality - the third one
> that has been largely ignored by formal theory production systems -
> perhaps will get a new leg to stand on - and with this many of the
> questions that we are unable to answer using the traditional tools may
> lend themselves to a new kind of understanding. I hope this makes sense.
>
> On reading further ( in much the same hurried way) the book by Henrik
> Gedenryd, "How Designers Work" the author writes about the possibility
> of using the external world "directly" instead of its surrogate
> representation, which he calls interactive cognition....reminds me of
> the arguments that my colleague at NID, Krishnesh Mehta has been making,
> about the benefits of the situated project mode (even if hypothetical)
> followed in deign education over the case methods followed in many
> management schools, as a source of deep learning of problem solving and
> design cognition...I am jumping many steps....but all these threads seem
> to come together with Bucky Fuller's claim that his Synergetics is the
> Geometry of Thought.
>
> see link for full copy of How Designers Think at <http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/index.html>
>
> I have, for some time now, been defining Design as a continuing act of
> "Informed Synthesis" where the rapid iterations of action in the real
> world and the growing and changing models of our cognitive
> representations lead to the resolution of a huge number of variables
> that make up a complex design task using a variety of tools and
> procedures including scenarios, multi-disciplinary group processes and
> deep individual investigations and rigorous research. I will elaborate
> some of these ideas and in the meantime I do look forward to suggestions
> and critique from the list to take this line of thought forward...to its
> logical conclusion, I hope.
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my office at NID
> 12 May 2004 at 9.50 pm IST