Elsevier

Design Studies

Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2006, Pages 587-613
Design Studies

To sketch or not to sketch? That is the question

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2006.02.002Get rights and content

In this paper we question whether sketching is essential for conceptual designing. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted think-aloud experiments with expert architects. They were engaged in two separate design processes: where they were not allowed sketch and where they were allowed to sketch. The comparison of design activities in these two conditions was based on a protocol analysis. The results show that there is no significant difference between sketching and not sketching based on three assessments: design outcome, cognitive activity and idea links. This case study shows that sketching is not an essential activity for expert architects in the early phases of conceptual designing.

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Related work

Most empirical studies of design problem solving have been based on an examination of design protocols emphasizing the verbal content sometimes with an analysis of the drawings as well (Schon, 1983, Akin, 1986, Christiaans and Dorst, 1996). Suwa et al., 1998, Suwa et al., 1999, Suwa et al., 2000 have studied an expert architect's design protocol focusing on the content of actions in four different categories to explore the underlying cognitive mechanisms of designers. They concluded that

Method

The three architects who participated in the study (two females and one male) have each been practicing for more than 10 years. Architects A1 and A2 have been awarded prizes for their designs in Australia; they have been running their own offices and also teaching part-time at the University of Sydney. Architect A3 is a senior designer in a well-known architectural firm and has been teaching part-time at the University of Technology, Sydney. We had preliminary meetings with nine potential

Protocol coding

The reliability of the coding process was measured by calculating the agreement percentages between the different runs of coding, which are first and second coding, first coding and arbitrated coding and second coding and arbitrated coding. Table 4 shows the agreement percentages between these different coding phases.

The average length of the time interval for each segment ranges from 19 s to 25.5 s, Table 5. The average time length for a segment in BF condition is 21.4 s, while it is 22.4 s in SK

Discussion

This case study has shown that there were no significant differences between sketching and blindfolded design activity in terms of design outcome scores, total number of cognitive actions (except for recall activity) and overall density of idea production. This result cannot be generalized to all architects/designers or all phases of design activity due to the small scale of the experiment. The design detailing/representation phases may require intensive drawing and various types of

Conclusion

In this paper we have demonstrated that externalizing a design may not be the only way to design visually. Sketches and in general externalizations are claimed to be central to designing; they represent the development of designs, they have an interactive role and a crucial effect in the mechanics of the design activity. However, based on our results from these experiments, we propose that ‘externalizing’ may not be necessary for expert designers, in the early phases of the conceptual

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and a University of Sydney International Postgraduate Award, facilities are provided by the Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition. We are grateful to the architects who participated in this study.

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