Analysis of a Blindfolded Architect’s Design Session

Architects deal with visual/spatial features and organization of larger scale real world elements than other domains. The use of mental imagery in the architectural design process is the key issue to transform and mimic the spatial aspects of the environment. Depending on the focus of the design process, the use of imagery could relate directly to visuo-spatial aspects, or could be about manipulating functions and concepts in an abstract manner since no externalization is involved. The research reported here concerns what types of design tasks are associated with spatial, visual and recall components in imagery. Using protocol analysis we analyzed the design session of an architect wearing a blindfold and concurrently verbalizing her design thoughts about a design brief. At the end of the session she quickly sketched the final design she held in her imagery on paper . This paper presents the analysis of the interactions between visuo-spatial, internal perceptual and recall actions. We found that the involvement level of percepts, recall and visuo-spatial actions differs through the episodes of the session possibly due to the different rates of visuo-spatial processing and due to the different nature of the design tasks at hand.