Week 11: Follow up to evocative objects and environments

For those interested in Turkle's work follow this link.

For those interested in expanding the idea from evocative objects (things that help you think) to evocative spaces (spaces that help you think) follow this link.

Week 11: Cognitive artifacts and visual reasoning

Moving to a more situated cognition perspective - we are going to delve into what people call "cognitive artifacts" - e.g., artifacts through which people create meaning or interact with a situations "back-talk". While there are many ways to imagine a role for cognitive artifacts in design situations, we're going to primarily focus on the use of representations in design. The Fish and Scrivener piece delves into visual cognition, while the Cardella et al and Blanco papers give two examples in design settings. I added a very short reading on the idea of "evocative objects" as something to help you experience the idea of objects as...cognitive.

• Fish, J and Scrivener, S. A. (1990) Amplifying the mind’s eye: Sketching and visual cognition. Leonardo, 23, 117-126. What are the "special attributes of sketching" as it relates to cognition (memory, reasoning, invention, etc.)? How might this play out in design situations?
• Cardella, M., Atman, C.J. and Adams, R. (2006). Mapping between design activities and external representations for engineering student designers. Design Studies, 27, pp. 5-24. How are representations used in design? How does this relate to behaviors we associate with "high quality" designs?
• Blanco, E. (2003). "Rough Drafts: Revealing and Mediating Design.” In D. Vinck (ed), Everyday Engineering: An Ethnography of Design and Innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press. What kinds of representations do designers create to help them design, and how do they use them (for what purpose)? How does Blanco make sense of this through a "cognitive artifact" lens?
• Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge: MIT Press. Think of a particular object that has significance for you. For example, it may be something you use everday or something you reference as an important memory or "way of thinking". What is that object and what meaning does it hold for you? How does this help you imagine the role of cognitive artifacts in design?

Design as X Book on Blackboard

All the annotated bibliographies and overviews have been compiled into a Design as X resource book. You can get it off of Blackboard (in the Design as X folder). This is a group resource - but remember if you choose to cite any of this give full acknowledgement to the person who put together the summary :)

Week 10: Design as situated (situated cognition and reflective practice)

The readings for this week introduce the idea of situativity (or situated cognition) and then explore this in the context of design (via reflective practice and two examples of studies).

Everyone should read Greeno and Schön (preferably read Greeno then Schon) and consider the guiding questions below:

• Greeno, J. (1998). “The situativity of knowing, learning, and research.” American Psychologist, 53, pp. 5-26. Questions: What is situated cognition and how does it relate to cognition? What are some of the implications of situated cognition (as compared to cognition) in terms of kinds of knowledge, kinds of learning environments, and kinds of research?
• Schön, D. A. (1993). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action Basic Books, New York. Question: What is reflective practice and how is it an example of situated cognition? How does it related to some of the ideas we've discussed in class?

Respond to the blog by choosing one of the papers below. Adams et al focus on reflective practice as seen in individual designers, Valkenburg focuses on a team of designers. For both, consider: what are the implications of a "reflective practice" lens for understanding design knowing and learning?

• Adams, R. S., Turns, J. and Atman, C. J. (2003). “Educating effective engineering designers: The role of reflective practice”. Design Studies, Special Issue on Designing in Context, 24(3), pp. 275-294.
• Valkenburg, R. (1998). The Reflective Practice of Design Teams. Design Studies, 19, 3, pp. 249-271.

Week 9: Design as X Discussion

Explorations into Design as:

• Ensemble
• Wicked
• Culture/Sustainability
• Innovation
• Communication
• User-Centered

Go to Blackboard to print out your own copy of our "book"!

Share your reflections on your experience by following the link below. Me, personally, reallly enjoyed it!

Snapshots from "analyzing design"

Hi all,

Here are snapshots from our "analyzing design" activity - Thanks George!

Week 8 - Cognition and Design

The readings for this week (Hunt and HPL) give an overview of cognition and early approaches to articulating design as cognition (Simon Chp5). This is a fair amount of reading, but they are written for a broad audience and so should be "easier" to read than say, Goel and Pirolli. The first chapter of Simon is provided as a "for your information" and provides an in depth analysis of what he means by a "science of the artificial".

Simply put - as you read these consider:
(1) What is cognition? What does it have to do with how people process information, store and retrieve from memory, organize their knowledge, and reason?
(2) How can you relate these ideas to how people design and what they know about design? Feel free trying to connect these ideas to what we did this last week!