Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen
Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P. 2000. Weaving Design Process as a Dual space Search. Department of Home Economics and Craft Science Research Reports 6. University of Helsinki.
There have been mystical assumptions that artistic creation or creativity in design is a unique process and expresses subjective knowledge or subjective abilities, rather than general principles or acquired expertise (Boden, 1992, Gardner, 1996). These assumptions have been challenged by a recently emerging area of inquiry, cognitive science which has provided new directions for studying creativity and design (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). There has been challenge to common belief that creativity is independent of expertise (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi & Sawyer, 1995; Gardner, 1996). Yet, creativity can be seen as a form of expertise (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; see also Akin, 1990; Boden, 1992), one of the most important prerequisites for a creative act. Moreover, creativity is a dialectical process among individuals, domains of knowledge and practices, and the field of proficient judges (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi & Sawyer, 1995; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Gardner, 1996).
The cognitive approach, in this present study aims to explain the underlying processes of creativity and expertise, which have often been seen to exist concurrently in the field of design. Design is a domain which is connected with several disciplines in which human activity is studied. The author examines design processes from the viewpoint of cognitive theory. In the background of the study is multi-disciplinary cognitive science focused on analyzing higher-level cognitive processes, such as thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and expertise in semantically complex domains (see Gardner, 1985). The author is not, however, an established investigator in cognitive science as such. Rather she seeks to draw upon its framework and theory in seeking to understand the cognitive processes of weaving design, and she has used and adapted some of its methodology for the present research. The developed methodology for the study of expertise has proven especially useful. The purpose of this section is to provide an overview of recent developments in research on expertise in general, and to highlight the current cognitive research of the development of expertise, in particular. The conception of creativity as a form of expertise will be emphasized (see also Akin, 1990; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Boden, 1992).
Cognitive science is a widely accepted approach to investigation of higher cognitive aspects in humans, and currently, a main line of the investigation in design research (Akin, 1986; Akin, 1997; Dorst, 1995; Rowe, 1987). Cognitive science has furnished at least three lines of inquiry, suggesting directions for recent research in understanding design processes. The theory of problem solving introduced by Newell and Simon (1972) in Human Problem Solving has been very influential in the study of problem solving in general, and design processes in particular. The aim of the early work of cognitive scientists was to study similarities between thinking and information processing. To begin with, cognitive science has well-developed concepts and an advanced theoretical framework for analyzing and studying the design process as a form of complex problem solving (Simon 1969, 1973; see also Akin, 1986; Goel & Pirolli, 1992; Goel, 1995; Rowe, 1987). In addition, methodologies used in cognitive science, especially protocol analysis, have stimulated empirical research on the design process (Akin, 1986; Akin & Lin, 1995; Chan, 1990; Eckersley, 1987; Goldschmidt, 1995; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, 1989, 1997a). The thinking-aloud method (i.e., protocol analysis) allows one to analyze the designers of internal thought processes. Finally, a cognitive framework allows one to discover the nature of knowledge structures and processes that facilitate experts’ higher-level performance (Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982; Chi, Glaser & Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). Studies of expertise have extended our understanding of the complex processes of knowledge-based problem-solving, skill acquisition and the development of the expertise, and thus provided categories and concepts for analyzing and conceptualizing design processes and the development of design expertise.
Over the past 30 years, cognitive research on problem solving and expertise has followed three lines of inquiry. Holyoak (1991; see also Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Bruer 1993) separates these generations of the expertise research in following way; the initial phase consisted of inquiry into the problem solving processes (e.g., Newell & Simon, 1972). Newell and Simon, however, studied problem solving using tic-tac-toe problems, arithmetic puzzles and chess problems, which do not represent semantically rich domains. In the ten year period, 1980-1990, the second phase of research focused on examining differences in the way experts and novices structure their knowledge, and in their successful execution of the domain-specific tasks in more knowledge-rich domains, such as physics and medical diagnosis (for reviews, see Glaser, 1984; Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982; Chi, Glaser & Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Ericsson, 1996). The study of problem-solving performances and expert-novice differences was also the first step toward better understanding of the design process.
Research on designing was related to the early work on problem solving that examined performance on well-structured tasks such as puzzle solving. However, the kinds of problems and tasks the designer solves are more complex, semantically rich and also, more ill-defined in nature than the chess or puzzle problems. Schön (1983) has emphasized that uncertainty, uniqueness and conflicts are typical characteristics of complex problems, such as those of design. It has become evident that design involves problem solving but not all problem solving is designing (Goel & Pirolli, 1992; Goel, 1995). According to Holyoak (1991; see also Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Bruer, 1993), the third phase of expertise research (1990-) has emphasized the dynamic development of expertise, in many cases, within its professional context. There has been a growing recognition that expertise is a more complicated phenomena than originally assumed and that consideration of the contextual aspect of expertise is essential for better understanding of how expertise develops (Feltovich, Ford & Hoffman, 1997). Reflecting upon the history of expert studies, one may summarize by noting that research on expertise started with the focus on individual processes. More recently, however, expert research has spread outward studying social, organizational, and collaborative aspects of expertise as practiced. Hence, the fourth phase of expertise research is starting to emerge: it is more related to expertise in context and as socially situated (Feltovich, Ford & Hoffman, 1997).
The investigation in cognitive science, according to present views of expertise, have been criticized for the rather insignificant role assigned to the concept of experience, and the role of the professional context (Bromme & Tillema, 1995; Engeström, Engeström & Kärkkäinen, 1995). Expert studies have addressed questions about the conditions for exceptional performance, but the professional field has not been considered to be a constitutive or essential factor of the expertise. Traditionally, cognitive theories and expert research have examined problem solving and knowledge structures as individual mental processes. However, more recent cognitive theories emphasize the physically and socially distributed nature of cognition (Hutchins, 1991; Norman, 1993). Distributed cognition refers to a process in which humans limited cognitive resources are shared socially or physically, in order to accomplish tasks that an individual would be unable to achieve alone. These kinds of cognitive tools are shared in the socio-cultural context of the domain. Thus, Bereiter & Scardamalia (1993) argued that it is not enough to know only what experts are like generally but researchers should investigate how expertise works and how it develops in context, and moreover, how it is socially recognized.
To summarize, the contribution of the cognitive science to the study of expertise as well as to the study of design processes has advanced knowledge by
The domain-general aspects of design process have been insightfully investigated by many researchers (Akin, 1979, 1986; Chan, 1991; Goel & Pirolli, 1992; Goel, 1995), but the critically important interaction between domain-general and domain-specific knowledge has remained unanalyzed. Thus far, design studies have relied on analysis of domain-general aspects of designing, including methods of heuristic search (Akin, 1986; Chan, 1990). These weak methods can, however, be effectively utilized only by the means of strong domain-specific knowledge and methods. Thus, design research has mainly taken as given the specific characters of design activity found in single-subject studies of design processes. Thus, there are numerous case studies concerning domain experts in design, but few comparison studies of novices and experts in design. Yet, the social milieu where design expertise has been acquired is clearly relevant to the understanding and acquisition of a multidimensional view of design expertise. The actual process of design is more complex than is assumed by a traditional cognitive approach because it involves various cultural-historical, contextual, and situational processes. Yet the problem- solving approach appears to have provided a productive basis for the present study, which focused on examining how students and experts solve design problems.