Designerly Ways of Knowing

Nigel Cross

2006-06 · Springer Science & Business Media

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This book traces the development of a personal research programme over a period of many years. The starting point for the programme was a realisation that research in design seemed to have no clear goal of what it was trying to achieve. A key insight for me was to realise that if we wanted to develop a robust, independent discipline of design (rather than let design be subsumed within paradigms of science or the arts), then we had to be much more articulate about the particular nature of design activity, design behaviour and design cognition. We had to build a network of arguments and evidence for ‘designerly ways of knowing’. The research programme has included some empirical, laboratory-based work, but has also included theoretical reflection, and attempts to review and synthesise the work of other researchers. I have reported this work at various times and in various places – in lectures, conference presentations and journal papers. In this book I have brought together a selected series of these reports, trying to trace a coherent thread, and to lay out some of the network of arguments and evidence referred to above. My goal has been to understand how designers think, or the nature of design expertise, trying to establish its particular strengths and weaknesses, and giving credit where it might be due for design cognition as an essential aspect of human intelligence.

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Nigel Cross is Professor of Design Studies at the UK’s Open University and a leading international figure in the world of design research. With academic and practical backgrounds in architecture and industrial design, he has conducted research in computer-aided design, design methodology and design education since the nineteen-sixties. His current principal research interest is in design cognition, based on studies of expert and exceptional designers. He has been a member of the academic staff of the pioneering, multi-media Open University since 1970, where he has been responsible for, or instrumental in, a wide range of distance education courses in design and technology. For many years Professor Cross was Head of the Department of Design and Innovation at the Open University – a department with one of the strongest research records in Art and Design in the UK. Recent books by Professor Cross include the third edition of his successful textbook on Engineering Design Methods (Wiley, 2000), and he has been a co-editor of books on Research in Design Thinking, Analysing Design Activity and Expertise in Design. His total publications list includes more than 120 items, plus many Open University course texts, broadcasts, etc. Professor Cross is also Editor-in-Chief of the international journal of Design Studies.