Reasoning processes involved in ICT-mediated design communication

Conversational interaction is central to architectural design practice. New information and communication technologies (ICT) change the designer’s traditional way of communicating and interacting. In this paper we investigate how communication in the design process might be supported using ICT. With this aim, we study a text-based Skype conversation between a design teacher and a design student. We consider this conversation as part of an architectural design process and analyse it using linkography. From the linkograph analysis, specific features are identified that apply specifically to text-based Skype interactions. We conclude that online text-based Skype interaction can be one of the many possible interactions by means of communication media (sketching, conversation, modelling, and so forth) during the design process, and provides a distinct set of characteristics that might be considered by the designer

Conversation and critique within the architectural design process: a linkograph analysis

Conversation and critique are central to architectural design practice as they function as tools for probing and further improving design ideas. We study the kind of design activities that take place in such conversation and critique within the architectural design process. We use linkographs to characterise the design process taking place during conversation. More precisely, we study conversations between design teachers and design students. In this article, an example design process is considered that takes place via a traditional face-to-face meeting. Using the resulting linkograph, we are able to assess the kind of design activity taking place during such sessions of conversation and critique

Discursive design thinking: the role of explicit knowledge in creative architectural design reasoning

The main hypothesis investigated in this paper is based upon the suggestion that the discursive reasoning in architecture supported by an explicit knowledge of spatial configurations can enhance both design productivity and the intelligibility of design solutions. The study consists of an examination of an architect’s performance while solving intuitively a well-defined problem followed by an analysis of the spatial structure of their design solutions. One group of architects will attempt to solve the design problem logically, rationalizing their design decisions by implementing their explicit knowledge of spatial configurations. The other group will use an implicit form of such knowledge arising from their architectural education to reason about their design acts. An integrated model of protocol analysis combining linkography and macroscopic coding is used to analyze the design processes. The resulting design outcomes will be evaluated quantitatively in terms of their spatial configurations. The analysis appears to show that an explicit knowledge of the rules of spatial configurations, as possessed by the first group of architects can partially enhance their function-driven judgment producing permeable and well-structured spaces. These findings are particularly significant as they imply that an explicit rather than an implicit knowledge of the fundamental rules that make a layout possible can lead to a considerable improvement in both the design process and product. This suggests that by externalizing th

Analysing how constraints impact architectural decision-making

Architectural design projects are characterised by a high number of constraints. Along with planning, energy performance and fire safety regulations, current designers have to face constraining factors related to budget, acoustics, orientation, wind turbulence, accessibility for the disabled, and so forth. These constraints steer the design process implicitly and explicitly in certain directions as soon as architectural designers aim at satisfying design briefs. We aim in this article at analysing the impact of such constraints on the design process. At this end, we have studied four design sessions in a particular (student) design use case. In analysing these four sessions, we used linkography as a method, because this appeared to be one of the better options to obtain a more quantitative assessment of the design process. The linkography method was combined with an interview of the student design team, in order to check the correctness of our conclusions

Directed Linkography and Syntactic Analysis: Comparing Synchronous and Diachronic Effects of Sudden Emergence of Creative Insights on the Structure of the Design Process

This paper reports on a study of the emergence of creative insights in the architectural design process. Using detailed ethnographic observations of designers working on an architectural design task, and coding these using linkographs, we identify two poles of design creativity: incremental improvement and the sudden creative insight. We show how these can be identified in the structure of the linkograph, giving rise to the possibility of better understanding the conditions under which creativity and innovation take place. Linkography is directed in relation to the time of emergence of design utterances. It is characterised as a pivotal structure of a multi-level hierarchical network. A quantitative model is proposed to capture the structure of events and sudden changes occurring in the design process using syntactic measures of space syntax and urban graphs. Two situations are compared: synchronous designing using ‘directed linkography’ looking at the backlink relations and the completed state of the linkograph. Local, global measurements and directed j-graphs are correlated with design contents and descriptions for the concept development. Our interest lies in capturing events of drastic changes and investigating the transformation of the associated interim products. Such events are hypothesised, reflecting significant transformation in concept reasoning and the configuration of the linkograph. Through this model, we aim to answer the question: why would sudden insights divert the network to a different structure state

Creative Discovery in Architectural Design Processes: An empirical study of procedural and contextual components

This research aims to collect empirical evidence on the nature of design by investigating the question: What role do procedural activities (where each design step reflects a unit in a linear process) and contextual activities (an action based on the situation, environment and affordances) play in the generation of creative insights, critical moves, and the formation of design concepts in the reasoning process? The thesis shows how these activities can be identified through the structure of a linkograph, for better understanding the conditions under which creativity and innovation take place. Adopting a mixed methodology, a deductive approach evaluates the existing models that aim to capture the series of design events, while an inductive approach collects data and ethnographic observations for an empirical study of architectural design experiments based on structured and unstructured briefs. A joint approach of quantitative and qualitative analyses is developed to detect the role of evolving actions and structural units of reasoning, particularly the occurrence of creative insights (‘eureka’ and ‘aha!’ moments) in the formation of concepts by judging the gradual transformation of mental imagery and external representations in the sketching process. The findings of this research are: (1) For any design process procedural components are subsets in solving the design problem for synchronic concept development or implementation of the predefined conceptual idea, whereas contextual components relate to a comprehensive view to solve the design problem through concept synthesis of back- and forelinking between the diachronic stages of the design process. (2) This study introduces a new method of looking at evolving design moves and critical actions by considering the time of emergence in the structure of the reasoning process. Directed linkography compares two different situations: the first is synchronous, looking at relations back to preceding events, and the second is diachronic, looking at the design state after completion. Accordingly, creative insights can be categorised into those emerging in incremental reasoning to reframe the solution, and sudden mental insights emerging in non-incremental reasoning to restructure the design problem and reformulate the entire design configuration. (3) Two architectural designing styles are identified: some architects define the design concept early, set goals and persevere in framing and reframing this until the end, whereas others initiate the concept by designing independent conceptual elements and then proceed to form syntheses for the design configuration. Sudden mental insights are most likely to emerge from the unexpected combination of synthesis, particularly in the latter style. In its contribution to design research and creative cognition this dissertation paves the way for a better understanding of the role of reflective practices in design creativity and cognitive processes and presents new insights into what it means to think and design as an architect

Impact of cognitive load associated with learning and using parametric tools in architectural design

This research aims to explore the impact of cognitive load associated with parametric tools on design ideation. Cognitive Load Theory refers to leveraged resources in limited working memory. In design, benefits have been found in higher load situations. However, semantic processing, associated with learning processes, has shown negative impact on the design outcome. Because of the rapid evolution of software, computational expertise tends to be increasingly transient, and architects find themselves in a situation where they constantly must partially re-learn their tools. Only few research takes the mental activity associated with digital environments into account, especially more complex ones such as parametric. Furthermore, there is no trace of research regarding how mental load associated with learning can affect design production. This paper focuses on an elective master course on computational design for architects. Both retrospective and concurrent protocol analysis are used in combination with the function behaviour structure ontology and linkography We observe that most of the cognitive effort is geared towards resolving issues related to using parametric tools, which is contradictory to previous studies. We find that their use of over-constrained experimental environments does not enable them to capture the learning related cognitive activity. Thus, it raises the question of experimental settings and research methodology regarding cognition in the digital age