Cognition: How Do Designers Think?

Observing what designers do has helped produce many powerful software tools, but the question of how designers think is important because the traditional predigital tools we can observe being used in traditional practice might not, themselves, o er the best support for design. The question of design cognition has been addressed by numerous authors and disciplines over the years, including computer scientists Newell et al. (1958), designers Cross (2011), Lawson (1997), and Schön (1984), design computing researchers Akin et al. (1987) and Gero (1990), and psychologists Kounios and Beeman (2009). Touching, as it does, on human creativity, insight, and inspiration, the answer has proven elusive but worth exploring.