Psychological modelling of creative design synthesis

Knowledge on designers' internal cognition is critical for optimising the creative design process. However, design cognition research currently lacks a common ontological basis and scientifically robust models of the cognitive (i.e. psychological) processes involved in creative design activities. This PhD project forms part of a broader research vision to address these challenges by bridging design and cognitive science for the first time, establishing the interdisciplinary field of cognitive design science (CDS). As a step towards achieving this vision, the project aims to create the first scientifically-based cognitive model of creative design synthesis.

Creative design synthesis is generally viewed as the creation and combination of design knowledge and concepts to produce ideas for functional products. It involves physical actions and is driven by cognitive processes, supported by external representations such as sketches, prototypes, and CAD models. Research on cognition in design synthesis currently faces several significant scientific challenges. Firstly, existing work is fragmented by the use of numerous different definitions, conceptualisations, and terminology to describe cognitive processing. This makes it difficult to interpret and compare the results of different studies, and to synthesise results across the field to derive general findings about cognition in the population of designers (e.g. through meta-analysis). Secondly, the field is dominated by small-scale studies using qualitative and frequently subjective methods such as protocol analysis. Whilst this approach may be effective for initial exploratory work, it produces results that can be unreliable, uncertain, and do not generalise and abstract beyond the small sample under study. Together, these issues present a fundamental barrier to the development of general, scientifically robust models of the cognitive processes involved in creative design synthesis. In turn, this is significantly impeding the advancement and maturation of design cognition research as a scientific discipline.

In contrast, the more mature field of cognitive psychology has established common theoretical constructs and models of the cognitive processes involved in human cognition. It has also developed a variety of robust quantitative methods for studying cognitive processes in large samples of people, thereby enabling generalisation and abstraction. These include, for instance, behavioural experiments and psychometric testing. Although psychologists have studied creativity in the general population, they have not examined the creative activities particular to product and engineering design, such as design synthesis. The proposed PhD project will bridge between these fields, applying established knowledge and methods from cognitive psychology to create the first cognitive model of design synthesis based on a common ontological foundation and generalisable empirical results.