Friday, October 16, 2009

Week 9 - Oct 21 - Design tasks engage design thinking

So - we've been unpacking "design" - now we're going to look at design tasks to understand what makes design unique from "non-design" (if we can say that). This will also be our first foray into cognitive theories - here the idea is that the nature of design tasks engage particular kinds of thinking. All three readings speak to this idea:
  • Goel and Pirolli take a cognitive view - and test out their idea using verbal protocol analysis (this is the paper that can be a bit tough to read - focus on the the table/charts of 12 features)
  • Jonassen talks a continuum of more cognitive to situated cognition perspectives
  • Dorst brings in a summary of "wicked" problems to understand why we see differences in how people approach design