http://oro.open.ac.uk/3271/1/Expertise_Overview.pdf

Expertise in Design: an overview

Exposure to restorative environments helps restore attentional capacity

Environmental preference and restoration: (How) are they related?

Design thinking is generally defined as an analytic and creative process that engages a person in opportunities to experiment, create and prototype models, gather feedback, and redesign. Several characteristics (e.g., visualization, creativity) that a good design thinker should possess have been identified from the literature. The primary purpose of this article is to summarize and synthesize the research on design thinking to (a) better understand its characteristics and processes, as well as the differences between novice and expert design thinkers, and (b) apply the findings from the literature regarding the application of design thinking to our educational system. The authors’ overarching goal is to identify the features and characteristics of design thinking and discuss its importance in promoting students’ problem-solving skills in the 21st century.

/pdf/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-important-57ydhsbdk2.pdf

What Is Design Thinking and Why Is It Important

In this paper we report on an in-depth study of engineering design processes. Specifically, we extend our previous research on engineering student design processes to compare the design behavior of students and expert engineers. Nineteen experts from a variety of engineering disciplines and industries each designed a playground in a lab setting, and gave verbal reports of their thoughts during the design task. Measures of their design processes and solution quality were compared to pre-existing data from 26 freshmen and 24 seniors. The experts spent significantly more time on the task overall and in each stage of engineering design, including significantly more time problem scoping. The experts also gathered significantly more information covering more categories. Results support the argument that problem scoping and information gathering are major differences between advanced engineers and students, and important competencies for engineering students to develop. Timeline representations of the expert designers' processes illustrate characteristic distinctions we found and may help students gain insights into their own design processes.

Engineering Design Processes: A Comparison of Students and Expert Practitioners

Macroscopic analysis of design processes based on a scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions

Groups of subjects judged one example of two different types of outdoor scene on each of the items of the Perceived Restorative Scale, on two preference scales and a familiarity scale. It was argued that the previously demonstrated large variations in preference between different types of scenes were the result of participants using the restorative value of a scene as an implicit frame of reference for the preference judgment. Preference and the Perceived Restorative Scale score correlated .81, whereas familiarity and the Restorative Scale correlated .31, and preference and familiarity correlated .32. This result supports the hypothesis regarding the use of the restorative value of a scene as an implicit frame of reference for preference judgments. It is further argued that variations in the preference and restorative value of scenes may be associated with fractal geometry.

Why do Preferences Differ between Scene Types

https://cs.gmu.edu/~jgero/publications/2000/SuwaGeroPurcellDesStu.pdf

Terry Purcell

Papers

Macroscopic analysis of design processes based on a scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions

Why do Preferences Differ between Scene Types

Unexpected discoveries and S-invention of design requirements: important vehicles for a design process

Fractal dimension of landscape silhouette outlines as a predictor of landscape preference

To sketch or not to sketch? That is the question