Workshop Aim:

There is a variety of approaches to studying the design process. These include both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative approaches include observational studies, ethnographic studies and questionnaires. Quantitative approaches include think-aloud and retrospective protocol studies, methods that treat the designer as a black box and infer the design process from the changes in the resulting design after changing some input variable, computational models of design processes, and cognitive neuroscience. Included in these approaches are those that commence with a formal model of the design process and attempt to fit the observed behavior into the model.

These approaches often vary based on the design domain, the nature of design task, the experience of the designer, and the background of the researcher. Foundational questions include whether any of these various approaches provide more insight or do we need them all, and whether there are ways of studying the design process that are independent of domain, task, experience and background.

This workshop aims to gather the community of researchers whose research or interest is in the area of studying the design process, to explore and develop ideas.