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