We believe that a cognitive science-based approach to design education can lead to significant improvements in the effectiveness of university design courses and to the future capabilities of practicing designers. The purpose of this workshop is to define and organize a framework of concepts and research upon which we can build a strong base of knowledge in the cognition of design learning.

Two questions appear fundamental to an interdisciplinary educational process. (1) How can we frame and structure design knowledge and design education in a form that will be applicable across design fields? That is, we seek to develop a conceptual framework for approaching design learning, regardless of the design domain; (2) Which social or collaboration aspects of design apply across a broad range of design fields and how can we characterize them? That is, we seek to understand cognitive actions, states or goal structures of cross disciplinary collaboration in the production of a design solution.

At present, design pedagogy generally follows one of two traditions. The first is the architecture or industrial design studio. In this tradition, design concepts, formal skills and knowledge are integrated and practiced explicitly in the design exercises of the studio. The cognitive processes of design are learned implicitly, either by example or watching others. It could be said that design education in this tradition is largely learning the culture of design practice.

The other tradition derives from engineering education. This pedagogy presents the formal aspects of design with a particular emphasis on analytical methods. Analytical techniques, understood in this community as the major component of designing, are taught by having students use mathematical formalization and paper and pencil computational methods to solve design problems. In senior level courses, more ill-structured design problems require students to predict the behavior of candidate designs through decision making, optimization or search. While the breadth of activity covered by such topics is constantly increasing, such educational practices cover only part of the total realm of design. It is often argued in the analytical camp, as compared to studio based approaches, that non-formal aspects of design can only be learned through practice.

While both traditions have experienced a certain degree of success in apprenticing students to effective design activity, it is our belief that each has its limitations. Enculturation into the practice of architecture is necessary but not sufficient. Development of analytical thinking and techniques is important but incomplete. In each case, the particular bias of the discipline restricts complete coverage of design as both a cognitive and social activity. Further, effective methods of assessment that aim to measure the development of the novice designer are sorely lacking. Also design problem fining and structuring is usually ignored. If design is important intellectually as well as economically and financially, then the education of future designers is too important to leave to insufficient approaches.

We believe a way to move forward in developing a conceptual framework for studying and understanding design can be based on cognitive science. Cognitive science approaches human activities as information processing so when applied to design learning it becomes imperative for us to understand the different information processing skills that outstanding practicing designers need and help develop those in future designers. Such an approach addresses explicitly how designers transform information about conditions and resources into a plan for a design result. The derivation and accumulation of information results from a variety of cognitive activities. There are the formal analytical processes of design, predicting a design's future behavior, the area given so much emphasis in recent engineering education. There are also the formal processes involved in synthesis and analysis, utilizing optimization and the heuristic processes of search. Information also derives from the iterative activity of problem definition (called requirements specification in software engineering) which is essential in dealing with an ill-structured problem spaces. Finally information is structured and issues resolved through the social and organizational aspects of design. We believe a cognitive approach encompasses and expands on the traditional approaches to design. While different types of design education (engineering, architecture, and software) emphasize different perspectives, all are relevant to the learning and practice of design.

The challenge is to identify and apply relevant areas of research in cognitive science and education to design learning. How can we use verbal protocol studies of expert designers to inform improvements in design education? In addition, how do we use educational theories of learning and transfer derived from cognitive science research to improve design education. We need to better understand how people gain new thinking and problem-solving capabilities, and how they become effective actors in a design milieu. A cognitive science approach to learning seeks to understand and describe the typical knowledge state of beginning and developing designers, how new information is structured and experienced for future work situations, and which stumbling blocks inhibit the use of design knowledge and processes. While learning theorists have provided important knowledge about how such learning of well-defined material takes place, there has been little transfer to more ill-defined areas, such as design.

We invite workshop participants to join us in our aspirations and help us contribute to these goals.