Enhancing Designers’ Neurocognition: Exploring Methods and Experiment Protocols

Sunday 7 July 2024, 9:00 am to 12:30 am

Workshop Chairs

Tripp Shealy (Virginia Tech) | tshealy@vt.edu 

John Gero (UNC Charlotte) | john@johngero.com 

Workshop Committee

Kosa Goucher-Lambert (UC Berkeley, USA)

Georgi Georgiev (Oulu University, Finland)  

Yong Zeng (Concordia, Canada) 

Mark Goudswaard (University of Bristol, UK)

Nayeon Kim (Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea)

Aim and Content

The workshop aims to explore interventions for enhancing designers’ neurocognition. The interventions include environmental, technological, chemical, and electrical stimuli. Following summary presentations of the most current literature about how each stimulus influences neurocognition, workshop participants will collaboratively develop new experimental protocols to measure their effectiveness on designers’ neurocognition. The outcome of this workshop is a shared set of protocols ready for implementation, potential new collaboration partners, and connections for data sharing and comparative studies.

The workshop is suitable for researchers interested in understanding and enhancing the cognitive processes involved in design. Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops or tablets for collaborative activities and note-taking.

Workshop Format

1. Introduction to Design Neurocognition (30 minutes)

a. Overview of the role of neurocognition in design.

b. Introduction to different types of interventions (environmental, technological, chemical, electrical) and their potential effects on neurocognition.

2. Exploration of Interventions (1 hour):

a. Biophilic Design: How natural elements in the environment can enhance design cognition.

b. Computer Generative Aids: The impact of design tools on cognitive processes.

c. Chemical Stimuli: The effects of caffeine on attention and focus during design.

d. Electrical Stimuli: How transcranial direct current stimulation can modulate brain activity related to design.

3. Break (20 minutes)

4. Collaborative session to develop standardized experimental protocols to test potential interventions to enhance designer neurocognition. (30 minutes)

5. Collectively develop a list of baseline measures, design tasks, neurocognitive measures, and participant criteria. (1 hour)

The outputs of the workshop will be used to prepare an experiment design and pre-register the study for publication. 

For queries contact Tripp Shealy (tshealy@vt.edu)