Kansei Information Processes in Early Design: Design Cognition and Computation - Emotional Engineering - page 62

Using the principles of protocol analysis recommended by Suwa, Tversky, Gero,
and McNeill [ 20 ], the entire verbal protocols were transcribed and segmented for
coding according to the coding scheme presented Table 1 . This scheme includes the
10 categories of design information. Next, written transcripts were attached to
corresponding video clips. The complete coding scheme enabled, so understanding
of connections between mental representation during retrieval and external infor-
mation during sketching and also yields an encompassing depiction of the cognitive
processes involved in analogical reasoning and categorizing design information.
4.4 Results
Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were integrated to describe the ana-
logical thinking process. The ! first noticeable result is about the type of design
information involved during early sketching (see Fig. 1 ).
The substance of the comments made by the designers is very dependent on the
design brief: Designing a Nike vacuum cleaner. For example, representative words in
value categories included “dynamism” and “aesthetics,” and the most common
semantic descriptors included sporty, dynamic, fl fluid, classic, technical, fun, friendly,
etc. The designers also employed 12 analogical words referring to, for example,
sports (using a harness or scooter, lifting weights, using fl flippers, cycling, dancing,
etc.), biomorphism (animals: shark ! fin, humans: mouth, and vegetables), and shoes
and luggage (backpacks, accessories, etc.). These references draw heavily on
semantic and conceptual associations with the Nike brand (e.g., shoes for sports).
Other sectors (e.g., industrial products, household electrical appliances used for
protection and air conditioning, robots, containers, and real estate) were also
mentioned. The category encompassing the function of the target product consisted
of responses related to its internal mechanics, units, and uses and operations such as
fan, dust bag, air cushion, etc. Consistent with the quantitative results of a study on
design information reported by Kim et al. [ 20 ], high-level information was used most
frequently (47.7 %), followed by middle-level (36.7 %) and low-level (15.6 %)
information. Thus, high- and mid-level information accounted for 84.39 % of the
words verbalized during early sketching. Low-level information tended to be rep-
resented in sketches rather than verbalized. The detailed frequencies of each category
are presented in Fig. 1 . The most frequently verbalized content was related to
function (27.6 %); this was followed by semantic descriptors (21.2 %). The
remaining six categories were mentioned relatively less frequently.
The second noticeable result is about how the content of information was
structured. The classi ! cation was done according to a Kansei ontological model
[ 33 ]. This model of data classi ! es all content of lexical information from designers
verbalizations in successive columns from the left to the right going from the most
abstract to the most concrete (see Table 2 ). So, we can ! find respectively with a
ranking going from high-level information the sociological values, the semantic