Expertise in Professional Design

Studies of the nature of expert performance in professional design originated in the late 1960s with protocol studies of architects and other design professionals. Primarily, they have been conducted by researchers who are themselves situated within the design professions, and these studies have been an important element in the more general growth of design research. More recently, researchers from fields such as psychology and cognitive science have also begun to make significant contributions to the study of design expertise. I will review and give examples of the range of research methods that have been applied in developing the understanding of expertise in design. I will then discuss the key aspects of design expertise, and some of its apparent weaknesses, that have been established from these studies. I will briefly comment on some of the observed development of competence within students of design, and conclude with a summary of what we know of the nature of design expertise. My starting point is that the ability to design is widespread amongst all people, but that some people appear to be better designers than others

Possibilities of Enacting and Researching Epistemic Communities

This article explores what the concept of epistemic community can contribute to studies of science and technology and to existing analytical frames of epistemic cultures, technosocial network and community of practice. Reviewing conceptions of epistemic community in political science, organisational studies and feminist epistemologies I suggest that heuristic dimensions include a focus on historical contingencies and timings; on particular epistemic projects and technologies that work as boundary objects; and on epistemic responsibilities and stratifications. These dimensions are further explored in two research vignettes. The first vignette follows the mobilisation and expectations of the Czech synchrotron user community at a funding event as a focal point for examining epistemic responsibilities and the genderings of community. The second vignette follows a biographical narrative about being and becoming a member of an epistemic community and amplifies the importance of different configurations of community. I argue that the contours, distributions and textures of an epistemic community cannot be studied at a single analytical site such as the laboratory and conclude by outlining what can be gained by using a refined concept of epistemic communities and sketching some strategies for further research.Epistemic Community, Epistemic Responsibility, Epistemic Cultures, Community of Practice, Gendering of Community, Synchrotron User Community