Mind In Design Research Articles

Design science and neuroscience: A systematic review of the emergent field of Design Neurocognition

Design Neurocognition is an emerging research field that aims to elucidate the “black-box” of a designer's mind through the use of brain imaging tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). More than a decade worth of study has led to many interesting research findings. Here, we systematically review the existing literature in the field. We identify 82 publications and provide an overview of nine main research topics that have been studied. We uncover a large variety of methodological approaches that currently hamper the evaluation of research findings through meta-analysis. Finally, we provide recommendations to advance the field and collaboratively generate a more complete understanding of human behavior during design activities.

Ultra high speed and novel design of power-aware CNFET based MCML 3-bit parity checker

MCML (MOS Current Mode Logic) based implementation producing fast response and compliment output at the same time gives an impetus to the researcher to replace Bulk CMOS. Moreover, tremendous challenges faced by bulk CMOS at channel lengths below 45 nm induces a need to strive for a technological replacement of silicon in years to come. This introduces a zest in designer's mind to look for competent and novel substances to overcome the shortcoming of existing silicon. The future technology should be capable to deliver fast response, low power operation, scalable to reduced dimensions, and strong towards process variations. Carbon nanotube based technology (CNFET) is one of the reliable and competent alternative because it has most of these desired features and similar operating principle as that of CMOS. And hence, this research article focuses on a relative evaluation of CMOS and CNFET version of 3 bit parity checker at 16-nm technology nodes. The CNFET based 3 bit parity checker is faster (9.75×), it offers improvement in power dissipation (11.93×), improvement in PDP (116.39×), improvement in EDP (1135.76×) compared to CMOS counterpart. Scaling down the device emerges with a challenge of variability, just as power, delay and area, variability also has an impact on performance of the circuit. Technology scaling has significant consequences such as wider variation. This research article also presents variability analysis, in terms of delay (tp) and power-delay product (PDP) for the proposed CNFET based MCML 3 bit Parity checker circuit. Extensive simulation using 16-nm technology node are carried out by loading two nominal copies of 'CNFET based MCML 3 bit Parity checker' (Circuit under Test) at either ends—input and output. This simulation framework supports the high level integration where stand alone operation has no application in the industry. The intent of this research is to investigate the circuit with minimal variability to propagation delay and PDP. The proposed ‘CNFET based MCML 3 bit parity checker’ exhibits improvement in delay (14.01×) and improvement in PDP (242.1×) variability as compared to CMOS counterpart. Thus, the CNFET based implementation emerges out as a robust circuit showing narrower spread in variability analysis against applied VDD.

Following John Hejduk's Fabrications: on imagination and reality in the architectural design process

This paper investigates the interaction between reality and imagination in the architectural design process. It engages with four inter-related inquiries. First, the interplay between reality and imagination in the architectural design process in student design-build live projects. Second, the interplay of reality and imagination for different agents in the architectural design process. Third, how the work of John Hejduk (1929-2000) enables a reappraisal of conceptions of reality and imagination in architectural design. Fourth, we address a live project for The Story Museum in Oxford, UK – a physical architectural space concerned with imaginary spaces – that suggests how an understanding of reality and imagination might be deepened in the architectural design process.The text reappraises the interplay of reality and imagination in architectural design as a cognitive process. There are two aims: to reassess empirical responses and received wisdom about what is real and what is imagined in architectural design; and to reassess the perception of differences between imagination and reality occurring across education and practice. ‘Thing Theory’ is proposed as a conceptual framework which allows us to improve our understanding of how architectural designs emerge, are transformed in the designer's mind, how architects communicate them to others and how they are understood and shared by others. Reference is also made to interviews with prominent architects. The term ‘thing’ was repeatedly used by these architects to describe moments in the design process when a break from reality had occurred. In these moments, subject and object seemed at their most intertwined. This moment is strong because it is so flexible in responding to change and managing complexity. It is also weak because it is a time when the designer tends to neglect vital everyday constraints such as occupation and ethics. However, this is a key moment because it allows possible future realities to emerge.

Designing networked learning with 4Ts

This paper tackles the issue of how to support the design of effective collaborative activities in networked learning contexts. At the crossover between the ‘learning design' and the ‘networked learning' research sectors, notions such as ‘collaborative techniques', ‘design patterns' or ‘scripts' are often used to describe and/or run online collaborative learning activities. Based on these concepts, technological tools have been implemented that reify these notions and support several phases of the learning design process, including the sharing and reuse of design representations. Despite the differences among tools, most of the them support the representation of learning designs that are already "in the designer's mind", while few technological tools specifically provide guidance and support in the early phase of the design process of collaborative activities, i.e. the conceptualization of the design. Focusing on this gap, this paper proposes a model and, based on it, a game supporting the conceptualization of online collaborative activities for networked learning contexts. Both the model and the game are based on the interplay of four variables, the 4Ts: Task, Teams, Time and Technology, regarded as the key aspects of the decisions to be made. The model suggests that, to design the online activity, the teacher/designer will need to "juggle" around with these four variables and their reciprocal relationships in a cyclic, iterative process, regardless of whether she wants to start the design from scratch or to reuse an already existing collaborative. Implemented with the aim of scaffolding such iterative process and supporting a group of teachers in the decision taking phases, the game consists of a board, representing the Time component, and of 5 decks of cards (respectively for the Task, Team, Technology, Technique and the Jokers). Each deck contains cards describing instances of Task, Team, Technology or Technique, while the Joker cards are empty and should be filled in by players with new instances. To guide the decisions, each card illustrates the dependencies between that particular instance of T and the others, thus making the decision criteria as explicit as possible and stimulating reflection on how each variable impacts on the others. Both the 4Ts model and the game have been field tested and evaluated by the developers with a group of 48 teachers. The results encourage the development of a digital version of the game, where cards are still tangible objects, and augmented reality techniques are employed to digitize the results of conceptualisation.

GPS RECEIVER IMPLEMENTATION USING SIMULINK

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space- based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. GPS (Global Positioning System) is the one of the most pre-dominantly used in most parts of the world In the past, the implementation of a complete GPS receiver was divided into two parts. The first part is implemented on ASIC or FPGA. This part includes the acquisition and tracking phases, where the algorithms of the both are written by the HDL programming language. The second part is the navigation solution part that is implemented on DSP by writing its algorithm by C/C++, FORTRAN, or assembly. This means that we have to deal with three environments to implement a complete GPS receiver. The three environments are the Simulation, FPGA, and DSP environments. Moreover, using a text programming languages in writing such long and complicated algorithms makes the process difficult to debug, modify. Simulink was used in the implementation of such receiver; there by introducing a new look for the technology that can be implemented through a graphical user interface environment. This makes every part in the receiver architecture very clear and easier to understand, follow, modify and debug. This can be considered a step added on the route of an open source GPS receiver. Using the same environment in both the simulation and implementation stages makes the designer's mind dedicated most of the time in developing and enhancing the algorithm through rapid prototyping and experimentation and less time on the coding. In general, this article can be considered as introducing a new look for designing, simulating, and implementing the typical GPS receiver using a graphical programming language, which is SIMULINK.

Functions in nature

This article explores and elaborates on how functions in nature help designers to conceive and understand new concepts and principles that may be developed later into metaphors. Where creatures in biology represent the products in design; even in biology, biologists use design terms based on human history, artefacts, nature and theories about how the human mind works to solve a problem or react to one. The problem the paper deals with is how to free a designer's mind from the barriers that slow down the process of creativity. But to do that, we need to understand the process of adapting the various elements of design, which represented in every creature. To fit each other primarily, then to surroundings seeking the ideal performance of function, using all available techniques and survive.

The Global Mechanical Engineer—The Future of the Profession in 2028

The Global Mechanical Engineer—The Future of the Profession in 2028

The latent semantic approach to studying design team communication

How does a team of designers come to construct knowledge about the artefact that they're designing? This question is the subject of intensive research on human behaviour in design employing methods including cognitive and psychometric evaluations and ethno methodological observations. Language-based communication has been argued to play a principal role although the structuring of communication as scaffolds for knowledge construction has never been measured directly. This article puts forth a method for studying design team communication that enables the direct measurement of knowledge construction. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) of language-based communication such as design documentation corpora and verbal communication reveals, from the local co-occurrence of vocabulary, coherence of thought and the formation of a socially held representation of the designed artefact. The results lead to the hypothesis that the similarity of language use bridges indirect relations among components of knowledge stored in each designer's mind, leading to a constructed shared mental representation of the designed artefact.

Visual Myths Creating Intuitive Impressions of Design Sources and Meanings

The creative expression of the designer is based on two main aspects. The principle focus of the designer's mind during a project (that which is being designed) is the most obvious and the most readily explained. However, there is another aspect that is generally not acknowledged. This is the source from which the designer designs, and this ‘tacit knowledge’ contributes to the particular creative expression of a specific designer (or artist, author or poet).This paper explores ways of understanding and expressing these roots of creative design decisions. It seems that it is inappropriate and even impossible to analyse and explain the creative act. However, it is still important to gain some appreciation of the bases and meanings of our design judgements and aesthetic preferences. Only by doing so can we hope to develop and evolve our ideas and understandings. Therefore, rather than attempting to employ analytical techniques or offer a rational explanation of this more hidden creative aspect, the argument is made for a more intuitive, impressionistic approach. The approach introduced and exemplified here, which is itself based in the creative process, is the ‘visual myth’. The visual myth is, at one level, a created fiction but at a deeper level begins to reveal an impression of the roots of the original design thinking.‘We can know more than we can tell.’ (Michael Polanyi, 1966, p.4)

Interrupted interface on the cybernetics of digital design process

From the viewpoint of Batesonian cybernetics, ‘conscious purpose’ and ‘artistic process’ are distinct ends of a spectrum of the functioning of ‘self’. The conceptual stage of the design process is essentially an artistic activity unencumbered with accuracy, dimensionality, scale, program or even tectonics, albeit all of these maybe tacitly present at the ‘back of a designer's mind’. Artistic activities involve broad mental processes that are beneath the stratum of consciousness. By definition, consciousness is selective awareness; it is linear in execution and limited in its capability to synthesize complex parameters. One of the central questions of this paper is “if artistic process requires one to abandon, or relinquish conscious purpose at the time of the generation of the work of art, and if the early stages of artistic process is a result of a vast number of ‘unconscious’ forces and impulses, then how can the computer, which demands (and thus propagates) geometric precision, focused operation and rational execution, be part of that process?” This paper will explore how, cybernetically, the computer can be ‘coupled’ with ‘self’ (via a visual interface) and the artistic process. Three specially devised conceptual design exercises—namely BlurrDesign, BlinDesign and BlitzDesign—and three corresponding “interruptive” computer interface modifications were deployed in an introduction to digital media course. The results of this study are now under consideration for their effectiveness in promoting conceptual design using the computer, and how the ‘self’ might form a cybernetic whole with the machine. The findings could have implications in design pedagogy, informatics and interface design.

Efficient analysis of integrated optical circuits by the spectral index method

AbstractThe ability to optimise the performance of today's opto‐electronic circuits over a range of operational parameters and fabrication tolerances is foremost in the designer's mind. The ability to investigate the effects of tolerancing and integration upon device performance over a range of wavelengths is highly desirable for their successful exploitation. The spectral index (SI) method is a well‐established method traditionally used for the analysis of the modal properties of semiconductor rib waveguides. In this paper the efficiency and accuracy of the SI method is exploited for the first time in a scattering‐matrix approach to the analysis of complex integrated optical circuits. The SI approach yields highly accurate results with minimal computational effort. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 38: 68–73, 2003

Sketching and the Psychology of Design

following considerations are suggested by an excellent essay of Gabriela Goldschmidt, The Dialectics of Sketching (1991), for whose publication anybody interested in visual design should be most grateful. author, an Israeli architect, undertakes to answer question, What kind of reasoning does sketching represent? question arises because sketching does not consist simply of representing on paper images held in designer's mind; it consists rather in a dialectic process, the oscillation of arguments which brings about gradual transformation of images ending when designer judges that sufficient coherence has been achieved.' This most relevant question points to psychological issues that aroused my interest. It reminded me of one of classics on subject of visual perception, Ernst Mach's treatise Analysis of Sensations, first published in 1886.2 Mach, a physicist, realized that scientists have no other access to material world than what is transmitted to them by senses, particularly sense of vision. Therefore, physicist must know what exactly information generated by vision is and by what rules perception operates. physicist's vital concern with perception parallels that of architects, who are also dealing with world of physical matter. They, too, have no other access to what they want to achieve or means by which to achieve it than what their senses make available to them. In what follows, I am relying on Goldschmidt's essay and on Mach's treatise. Goldschmidt describes process of creative design as an interaction of arguments and moves. Arguments are labors of designer's mind, explorations of task and reasoning about it. Moves are physical motions engendered by arguments. Moves are what psychologists call behavioral aspects of human activity. architect's moves produce drawings and they supply essential new food for arguments. drawings are tangible visual percepts, and it is their relation to arguments that is principle concern of present discussion. Mental images derive from optical percepts, but they are not identical copies of them. Mach describes them as necessary completions and elaborations of percepts. They differ from optical 1) Gabriela Goldschmidt, The Dialectics of Sketching, Creativity Research Journal 4: 123-43. See also, Gabriela Goldschmidt, Criteria for design evaluation: a process-oriented paradigm, in Y. E. Kalay, ed., Evaluating and Predicting Design Performance (New York: Wiley, 1992). In this article I have not referred to this second paper.

Problems in the Development of a New Aeroplane

The title of this paper clearly has a wide scope. None will dispute the presence of many problems in aircraft development. It was suggested in the first place that this paper might take the form of a description of the workings of a chief designer's mind when a new aeroplane is conceived. Such a paper would deal largely with technical considerations, such as choice of engines, wing loading, plan form and so on.The diversity of uses to which the modern aeroplane is put gives rise to great differences between types. A jet fighter, for example, will be influenced by considerations far removed from those controlling the design of a long—range civil transport. To attempt to cover in detail such a wide field would result in an encyclopaedia rather than a paper; to tackle it in general terms would beget a vagueness lamentably devoid of interest.Therefore, it has been thought wiser to attempt an assessment of some of the more fundamental problems confronting aviation.

Photo‐Elasticity and Design Problems

PHOTO‐ELASTICITY is not a new subject. In recent years much progress has been made towards a simplified technique, so that this method of stress analysis is now becoming popular in industry, and is giving valuable information about the failure of engineering parts. There is no mystery about the method; the application of photo‐elasticity is found to require not so much the learned scientist for its satisfactory execution, but rather the man with a sound common sense and a knowledge of the fundamental principles underlying engineering problems. It is found, too, that if the method is intelligently applied it is comparatively cheap and can well repay itself by saving thousands of pounds worth of damage caused by failures under service conditions. To the practical designer photo‐elasticity provides him with one of the most powerful weapons by which he may analyse the stresses existing in complicated engineering parts. In effect the responsibility of a design is passed from the intuitive thought within a designer's mind to the certainty of facts.