Commonalities Across Designing: Empirical Results

This paper presents empirical evidence of commonalities across designing that appear to be independent of the designers’ geographical location, expertise, discipline, the specific design task, the size and composition of the design team, and the length of the design session. Our evidence is founded on thirteen highly heterogeneous design case studies that differ along these dimensions but exhibit some commonalities. We analysed the results from protocols of these case studies produced by a variety of researchers, using a method that is based on the FBS framework and is independent of any domain- or situation-specific parameter. We found commonalities across all thirteen case studies, related to the first occurrence of design issues in the design process, and to the continuity and the rate with which design issues are generated. Our findings provide preliminary support for the claim that designing can be studied as a distinct human activity that appears in different expressions but shares the same fundamental characteristics.