Design Education
Cognitive and neurocognitive studies of design education: protocol studies using novel ontologically-based coding scheme that produces quantitative, commensurable results independent of domain, task and participant education and background; projects study high school students, undergraduate students in multiple domains and professionals; projects include longitudinal and lateral studies of designers.
Funding comes from NSF.
We examine fundamental cognitive behaviors while designing. Projects include:
differences between high school students and undergraduate engineering students
effect of domain on cognitive behaviors
does students' design cognition correlate with design theory
how does brain behavior change during education
how does brain behavior change when using different ideation techniques
Publications
Papers that describe some of the research methods and some of the main fundings
Becker, K, Gero, JS, Pourmohamadi, M, Abdellahi, S, Almeida, L and Luo, Y (2018) Quantifying differences between professional expert engineers and engineering students designing: Empirical foundations for improved engineering education, Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah: ASEE2018 Paper ID #21338
Gero, JS (2019) Measuring students not just their output: The new fields of engineering cognitiometrics, physiometrics and neurometrics, Clive L Dym Mudd Design Workshop XI, Claremont College, CA (pdf)
Gero, JS, Yu, R and Wells, J (2019) The effect of design education on the creative design cognition of high school students, International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation, 7(4): 196-212. DOI: 10.1080/21650349.2019.1628664
Hurst, A, Nespoli, O, Abdellahi, S and Gero, JS (2019) A comparison of the design activity of academics and practitioners using the FBS ontology: A case study, in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED19), Delft, The Netherlands, 5-8 August 2019. doi:10.1017/dsi.2019.138
Lammi, M, Wells, J and Gero, JS (2020) High school pre-engineering students' engineering design cognition, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, online 22 July 2020 (link)
Shealy, T, Gero, JS, Hu, M and Milovanovic, J (2020) Concept generation techniques change patterns of brain activation during engineering design, Design Science 6, e31. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2020.30
Sopher, H, Milovanovic, J and Gero, JS (2022) Exploring the effect of Immersive VR on student-tutor communication in the architecture studio. In J van Ameijde, N Gardner, H Hyun, D Luo and U Sheth (eds), CAADRIA 2022 Post Carbon, Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, Sydney, Australia. Vol. 2, pp. 315-324. (pdf)
People
The people who have or are working with me on this include:
Sarah Abdellahi
Lilian Almeida
Mohammadali Ashrafganjouei
Kurt Becker
Mo Hu
Ada Hurst
Michael Lammi
Yuzhen Luo
Julie Milovanovic
Oscar Nespoli
Tripp Shealy
Hadas Sopher
John Wells
Rongrong Yu