Abstract
Graphic design thinking is a key skill for landscape architects, but little is known about the links between the design process and brain activity. Based on Goel's frontal lobe lateralization hypothesis (FLLH), we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brain activity of 24 designers engaging in four design processes-viewing, copy drawing, preliminary ideas, and refinement-during graphic design thinking. The captured scans produced evidence of dramatic differences between brain activity when copying an existing graphic and when engaging in graphic design thinking. The results confirm that designs involving more graphic design thinking exhibit significantly more activity in the left prefrontal cortex. These findings illuminate the design process and suggest the possibility of developing specific activities or exercises to promote graphic design thinking in landscape architecture.
Highlights
Design thinking is a highly cognitive activity that is widely used in design-related fields to solve the problem in the man-made environment
We could infer that design thinking involves a series of reasoning mechanisms to select, identify, and solve the problem [2, 4, 5]. This design process is called “real-world problem solving” with the “select-and-combine model” [6], which relates to the mechanism of conceptual sketches of cognition [7] that might support the frontal lobe lateralization hypothesis (FLLH) in brain activations [4]
To test the association between the different design processes and brain lateralization, this study explored the neural mechanisms associated with the graphic design thinking process by using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan to identify parts of the brain that predominate during this phase of landscape architecture design
Summary
Design thinking is a highly cognitive activity that is widely used in design-related fields to solve the problem in the man-made environment. We could infer that design thinking involves a series of reasoning mechanisms to select, identify, and solve the problem [2, 4, 5]. This design process is called “real-world problem solving” with the “select-and-combine model” [6], which relates to the mechanism of conceptual sketches of cognition [7] that might support the frontal lobe lateralization hypothesis (FLLH) in brain activations [4].
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