A cognitive account of collective emergence in design

Abstract

Design in many settings is an inherently collective and creative undertaking, with phenomena of emergence at the heart of the activity. Cognitive accounts of emergence in the context of design have not taken its collective nature into account. At the same time, accounts of collective emergence do not recognise certain salient attributes of design, including the importance of visual thinking and various media for external representation. With reference to two distinct theories of emergence, Oxman's account of design emergence in terms of visual cognition, and Sawyer's account of collaborative emergence in conversation and performance, this paper reports results from a study of a high-performing, technologically mediated concurrent design practice. On-site observation, interviews, and video interaction analysis were used to render the creative process of engineering design in fine-grained detail. The resulting insights support aspects of both theories in that creative activity appears to proceed substantially through modalities of visual cognition, while collaborative products are arrived at through an essentially collective process involving multiple participants and unpredictable developments. The combined view presents a richer picture of collective emergence in design than either theory alone provides.

Keywords:

• design cognition
• interaction analysis
• collaboration
• emergence
• visual representation

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to the professionals at Jet Propulsion Laboratory who opened their remarkable practice up to facilitate this inquiry. Although they are necessarily represented here only by pseudonyms, this research would not have been possible without their generosity and commitment. The helpful comments of several anonymous reviewers are also gratefully acknowledged.

 An earlier version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of Creativity and Cognition 2009.

Notes

1. Mark (2002) describes Team-X, the longest-running standing design and proposal development at JPL, formed in 1995. The study described in this paper took place with another team, the Next-generation Payload Development Team (NPDT).

2. Participants' conversational contributions are paraphrased here as a concession to space considerations. In some instances reference to domain/conceptual knowledge and image schematic content were more explicit in the actual transcripts than can be reproduced here. In other cases references were implicit, and therefore to some extent conjectural. The actual methodology involved observation and interviewing of key participants as well as fine-grained video interaction analysis. In the absence of specifically corresponding language and gestures, lack of repair behaviour on the part of participants themselves was used to infer that they believed their conversation was coherent and sensible from one contribution to the next – in which case the coding protocol called for a minimum number of image-schemas necessary to account for the ‘connectedness’ of the conversation.

3. JPL required specific language not in the public domain to be disguised owing to export control concerns.

4. These dynamics are echoed in the constructive appropriation, ‘remixes’ and ‘re-purposing’ evident in the creative activity of scientists and children recounted by Aragon et al. (2009).

5. See also Harrell, this issue, with regard to the significance of embodiment and dynamically constructed mental imagery as a basis of meaning.

6. DiSalvo et al. (2009), provide examples of activities to promote open and imaginative thinking amongst people without an a-priori basis for collaborative common ground. Aragon et al. draw attention to the range of motivations and what people get out of collaboration.

7. See also Le Dantec, this issue, with regard to dimensions of enculturation inherent in disciplinary and occupational perspectives and how these may be conveyed through the use of exemplars and expressive gestures in interaction.

8. Phalip et al. (2009), point out effects along these lines flowing from their tool to support remote collaboration in film scoring.