ABSTRACT
Design processes can be studied in dierent ways. Analyzing Design Activity, by Cross et al. (1996), is a good example of how the same protocols of designers have been analyzed from various scientic and practical perspectives. One of the most relevant aspects in modeling the design process is decision making. In 1969 Simon already noted that decision making and design are so intertwined that the entire decision-making process might be viewed as design. In particular, the conceptual design phase, when the solution space is explored and the product and context have to be observed from multifaceted perspectives, is a decision-intensive process (Rehman & Yan, 2007). Also, Longueville et al. (2003) noticed that in recent years a number of proposals have been advanced for the study of decision-making processes in knowledge areas such as management, cognition, engineering design, and articial intelligence. us, decision making is a eld of study that is constantly addressed in all domain knowledge areas; the main driver of those studies is the cognitive assessment of how decision making occurs. erefore, a decision-making framework will be presented that forms the basis for the analysis of the three protocols. e next section will rst give some background information regarding the design processes in different domains. Next, the method used in this study will be explained briey, followed by an analysis of the three protocols.
