Tracking Design Development through Decomposing Sketching Processes

We conducted a protocol study of the architectural sketching process. We decompose the process into process flows to explore the extent to which it expresses concept development in schematic and refined design phases. We track the development of design concepts in these phases by following the process flows of individual sketched strokes. We argue that each stroke drawn by the designer reveals a probability of an embedded concept, and that this concept is either promoted and propagated throughout the design phases, or blocked while designing. We expand the notion of lateral and vertical transformation in design by introducing a set of processes described as cross propagation, lateral promotion and vertical promotion.