Representations of Design Thinking

In this paper, the authors describe how the design thinking process can be represented drawing upon on a review of recent studies of design practice and designer creativity. The representation of creative design and how the resulting models can be applied to the design of computer support systems and to design education are discussed significant research, which has represented design thinking, was examined. One approach to design thinking is to extract the features of the designers' strategic knowledge, for which comparative studies between expert designers and novices are useful. Also, controlled experimental studies may be adopted in order to understand the nature of the idea generation process. Candy s model of the technologists' contribution to human creativity is intended to assist the design of computer supported creativity. Another important research area is focused on time lines in the design thinking process and Lawson has described such processes in terms of parallel lines of thought. From research by Nagai and Noguchi into design thinking as a transformation process from keywords into images, a thinking-path model has been proposed. Finally, the methods of research and representation of design thinking in order to gain a deeper understanding of the designers' creativity are proposed. The authors point out the importance of drawing upon different research approaches from cognitive science to design thinking, as well as knowledge from neurological science and computational modeling all of which are required for future research developments in design science.