Back to Research Findings
Research Notes:
1) Design thinking has a large sequential and cyclical component, these processes are supported by cisual representation.
a. Design thinking operates through externalize representations in visual reasoning.
i. Sequence of: seeing-moving-seeing cycles.
b. The designer thinks of something and then draws it out and the drawing provides a kind of feedback to the designer.
i. The designer has a ‘reflective conversation with his or her ideas’ by the design drawings giving ‘back talk’ : a feedback mechanism to aid in the thinking of designing
2) Two different interpretations of the model:
a. Moving connotates the ‘moves’ of the designer who acts upon his/her seeing, an his/her reflection on the visual representation
i. psychological content of design thinking
b. Algebra of Shapes: mathematical and computational view of design where moving connotes shape relations and rule transformations that are embedded in a mathematical model.
i. representational formalism, process model for the externalization of visual reasoning in design.
c. Arnheim is important in this discussion because his work proposes that cognitive processes are inherent in the visual process and cannot be separated from perception
3) Marr, in his computational approach, describes vision as a process that produces a shape description from images of the external world.
a. Shapes are used in drawings to describe physical properties of the world.
b. Shapes are used in diagrams to describe abstract concepts.
c. In design, shapes can be design concepts or design the objects of design.
4) Abstracted visual imagery provides a medium for giving symbolic expression to domain knowledge.
a. Shapes are ambiguous figures that are open to interpretations, this process is the ‘seeing-moving-seeing’ model proposed by Schon.
i. Since it can be interpreted, emergence is a conceptual and perceptual process.
b. Shapes are ambiguous because they can be divided into several parts in many different ways. The creation and dissection of shapes are independent processes.
c. Designers exploit this property by assigning new meaning to pre-existing models. One can re-analyze a drawing and get a different conceptual understanding out of that analysis.
5) Syntactical Emergence deals with the syntax of shapes, their legibility, properties, and transformations in the sequential evolutionary process of emergence.
a. Emergent shape: a shape that exists only implicitly in a primary shape and is never explicitly input and is not representat at input time
b. Emergence of sub-shape: emergent sub-shape is any closed or unclosed, explicit or implicit part of a primary shape.
6) Semantic emergence through the semantic properties of shapes
a. Recent studes show that while drawing or sketching shapes, the experienced designer can reason about their properties as well as about the shapes as form.
i. Reasoning can include properties shuch as the function or the implied acticites that are represented by the shapes.
ii. This exemplifies the way in which shapes symbolize domain semantics.
7) Cognitive Emergence:
a. Certain design schemas, a pattern or configuration, uses the ability to generalize a perceptual event in order to map it to a knowledge structure already stored in memory.
i. Certain schemas may be tied to already existing semantics about a given scenario.
1. A designer can look at a drawing pattern and know what is going on regardless if he has been told what the context of the drawing is.
b. Emergent forms are dependent on cognitive processes. In order to extract the underlying structures (schemas) one must use higher order cognition. This higher order cognition influences the perception of the drawing and thus ties cognition to perception.
8) Psychology to visual reasoning in design
a. Low level perception vs. high level visual cognition:
i. Perceptuion explains how the sensory information is transformed into a model of the real world as represented by the original stimulus pattern.
1. Stimulus driven
2. Determine edges/ boundaries
3. What object is rather than what object is about
4. take information actively by seeking specific or distinctive part-whole characteristics through identification of shape.
a. stimuli derived from: legibility of contour, geometric form and pattern, gestal.
ii. May have visual prototypes which guide perceptual identification.
b. Visual cognition:
i. involves stored information.
ii. knowing about the object.
iii. recognition of apperent visual properties as well as information about the object itself
iv. initiates thought processes relating to the perceptual event.
v. Primary perceptual functions may provide an indexical function for viusla cognition.
1. Initiates reasoning with the perceived stimuli of visual objects.
vi. Differentiation of square from rectangle is an example of understanding that is stimulated/indexed from the perceptual event.
1. Knowledge of visual properties of square can also be morphology and syntax.
a. Certain geometric shapes, patterns, and gestalts may posses a kernel of visual knowledge and function as prototypes in a more complex cognitive phenom.
9) Mental Imagery
a. Recognition: input matches a visual memory
b. Identification: input matches a stored representation in associative memory.
i. Asst. mem is accessed to look up descriptions of parts and spatial relations, which are used to form an image of an object.
c. Visual images are built on the basis of visual memories. Prototypes and precedents can be recalled and manipulated during the design process in visual imagery in order to create novel configurations.
d. Visual reasoning is the high level cognitive process that exploits images of the domain’s visual knowledge that is acquired over time.
e. A medium for visual memory.
i. Mental images are stored and associative memory attaches semantic information that can be accessed when these images are recalled.
1. Thus, mental imagery may be a bases for shape recognition.
10) Visual Cognition in Design
a. Two processes that images play in enabling emergence:
i. a process of perceptual interpretation that is concerned with the description of a pattern
ii. a process that uses this pattern for the generation of new structures
1. Existing visual memory guides shape manipulation, transformation and invention
b. Images support interpretation and enable reasoning.
c. ‘Re-cognition’: introduction of cognitive content to visual images in order tot enable visual reasoning.
i. Model: perceptual evevnt-cued images-cued interpretation (domain semantics)-re-cognition (domain knowledge, values)-cued transformational operations (domain knowledge)-back to perceptual event.
d. Drawings are segmented into elements that can reveal thought in a particular domain.
i. Drawings reveal not only the percept, but the concept. An image can convey domain information. This is most likely done through the activation of visual memory and associative memory that goes along with those images.
1. This can be related to Barsalou’s perceptual symbol systems. One image can activate an entire perceptual symbol systems that draws on experiences with images of that type seen before
2. In this way, images can become schematized and certain shapes can become closely associated with a given concept.
e. The prototypicality may stem from different sources, the answer is not yet clear.
i. It could be from repeated use of the a certain schema, thus prototyping a given shape
ii. Or, the domain semantics may give rise to the prototypicality.
iii. The domain content of a visual image also codes what can be done to this images. How they can be manipulated and changed in order to create new results.
f. Thinking with images in mind can be mapped to thinking with externalized images on paper.
i. An aspect of embodiment that is related to this topic is offloading cognition onto the environment.
1. The drawing becomes part of the cognitive system and the feedback between the visual system, the drawing, and higher order processes creates a unique interplay/communication in the designing process.
11) What designers do in visual reasoning in emergence
a. ‘In its simplest form, design is about the emergence of shape and form in response to objectives’
b. Three important aspects of cognitive emergence:
i. Conceptual Emergence
ii. Transformational Emergence
iii. Anticipated Emergence
c. Conceptual Emergence
i. generic term to signify emergence based upon the exploitation of conceptual knowledge as a general class of design domain knowledge.
1. Interpreting images includes seeing implicit shapes that are not present upon first examination.
2. Generating an image is the ability to used stored information to produce an image
ii. Conceptual emergence is the process by which mental image memory is transformed into a formal configurational schema, such as an architectural drawing.
iii. Emergent shapes from the design process is guided by higher level cognitive process, not accidental, like normal theories of emergence.
d. Tranformational Emergence
i. Tranformation is the ability to modify patterns in images.
ii. Changing the image in the mind and being able to externalize this image display some syntactic property of the image and deals with the domain knowledge behind that image.
1. One must know the meaning and structure of an image if one is to rotate it and manipulate it in a meaningful way. The process of seeing-moving-seeing, generates a new understanding of the object at hand.
2. The transformation draws upon knowledge of the domain and allows additional inferences to be drawn according to the transformation.
e. Anticipation in emergence
i. The designer may not know exactly what they are looking at in the process of transforming the image, but they know the underlying language of the image. They have a visual prototype, a domain knowledge, of the image and are able to anticipate the effect of transformation upon the shape.
1. In this way, emergence is anticipated and guided, not purely accidental, as is claimed in other theories.
ii. ‘Designers do not know what exact shape will emerge but they do know how to manipulate shape ambiguity and transform images in order to obtain a desired form’.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.