1. DESIGNER’S BEHAVIOURAL FLOW IN IDEATION PROCESS
PEI-JUNG CHENG, JEN YEN AND MANLAI YOU
Graduate School of Design
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Abstract. The study chiefly explored the behavioural flow and the
linkage relationship between the searched content and the transformed
ideas in the designer’s ideation process through the methods of in-situ
observation of two practicing graphic designers. This paper proposes
a model for illustrating the designer’s behavioural flow in the ideation
process. The study should be regarded as a pilot study for proposing
an analytic method to the related research in the design field and other
possible methods should be utilized to further study the ideation
process in the future for interpreting the deep linkage between the
content searched for and the ideas generated.
1. Designer’s Behaviour in Ideation Process
Designing is regarded as a search process (Simon 1969) in which a designer
has to find an optimum solution to meet the initial design problem.
Generating and developing ideas to find possible solutions has become an
essential part of the design process for designers. Therefore, a key issue in
the design-relative research is realizing how a designer faces the design
problem and generates the appropriate approaches to solve the problem in
the ideation process, especially focusing on the transforming procedure and
condition of the ideas. For this reason, many researchers have studied how
designers utilize their own sketches and how such sketches help them think
up ideas and concepts (Goldschmidt 1991; Schön and Wiggins 1992; Suwa
and Tversky 1997; 2001) thus, researchers explore their behaviours and
thinking procedures in the ideation period to catch the designers’ thinking
path through analyzing the designers’ external representations.
Moreover, a designer’s ideation activity is described as the well known
interactive structure of “seeing-moving-seeing” (Schön and Wiggins 1992)
that is driven by the designer’s “reflection”. The seeing action includes both
the designer’s active searching intention and the content they are seeing. In
terms of the content, visual stimuli may become the trigger that draws out
the designer’s reflection which then influences the designers’ actions within

2. 2 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
the ideation process. Therefore, many researchers believe that more visual
clues trigger designers’ mental images in their ideation process (Schön and
Wiggins 1992; Herbert 1993; Goldschmidt 1994; McGown et al. 1998;
Verstijnen et al. 1998; Suwa et al. 2000; Dorst and Cross 2001; Petre and
Sharp 2006).
On the other hand, Gero and Kannengiesser (2004) utilized the
interactive relationship among the three worlds, “external world”,
“interpreted world” and “expected world”, to illustrate the situated designing
(Figure 1) that may interpret the intention of designer’s active searching-
retrieving (S-R) behaviour. That is, the designer’s S-R behaviour could be
regarded as the external presentation of his/her expected world, and the
targets that a designer is searching for or retrieving are predicted according
to current goals and interpretations of the current state. However, what is the
designer’s behavioural flow like? And what kind of stimuli connects with
which type of idea has not been discussed so frequently in the past research.
Especially, most related research about the designer’s thinking and
designer’s behaviour has concentrated on the area of product design,
engineering design and architectural design. Therefore, it is very important
to explore the linkage relationship between the searched content and the
transformed ideas in graphic designer’s ideation processes through the
methods of in-situ observation. Furthermore, our observations on the
designers’ sketches aim at tracing the interlinking of their ideas as far as
possible, in which the sketches therefore could be regarded as a means of
providing clues to trace the transformation of the designer’s ideas.
Figure 1. Situatedness as the interaction of three worlds
(Gero and Kannengiesser 2004)
2. Method
This study conducted in-situ observation mainly to research the designer’s
behavioural flow and to attempt to find the linkage relationship between the

3. 3
content they are searching for and the content they are sketching in the
ideation process. Every participant in this experiment was allowed the
greatest freedom and unrestricted searching for relevant data to perform an
assigned task in her practicing space as the situated designing happened in
everyday. Each participant was given the needed time to perform her task in
spite of the progress rate she achieved. We stopped recording when the
designer thought that she has developed an idea she expected to serve as the
final representation. At the same time, in order to avoid interrupting the
participants’ ideation process, their behaviour and external representation
throughout the period were monitored by a digital camera which was placed
to the left side of the designer (see Figure 2), with the aim of gathering the
designers’ nonverbal representations.
(a) participant A (b) participant B
Figure 2. Monitoring method in this experiment
2.1. PARTICIPANT AND TASK
In this study, two graphic designers participated in the experiment by
purposive sampling. Both of them had at least two years of experience and
were not aware of the purpose of the experiment. The two participants’
backgrounds and personal information are presented in Table 1. The in-situ
observation was executed in an individual studio and a clothing company in
Taiwan. Two participants were assigned the same task that was devised by
the experimenter for the sake of grasping all participants’ representations.
The task in this study was as follows: to design a mark for the Paralympics
(Table 1).
TABLE 1. Two participants’ individual information and the design task
Experience
Participant Sex Type of company Design task
(years)
A female 7 individual studio to design a mark for the
B female 2 in-house designer Paralympics

4. 4 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
2.2. CODING SCHEME
The experimental data in this study was segmented according to a set of
behavioural codes using the content analysis technique. The designer’s
behaviour coding scheme developed for the analysis were adjusted and
shared the characteristics of Atman and Bursic’s design activity coding
scheme (1996), Chusilp and Jin’s cognitive activity model of conceptual
design (2004) and Cardella et al.’s representation coding scheme (2006).
Therefore, ten kinds of behavioural codes were the coding standards of this
research (the ten codes with definition are shown in Table 2). Moreover, the
researchers also examined the whole film to certify that both designers’
behaviours within the recorded data could be categorized into the ten codes.
A segment is the behavioural unit that the participants presented which
was cut from the raw data that was transcribed from the video part of the
experiment. It is the basic unit to analyze the presenting order of designer’s
searching-retrieving behaviour (S-R behaviour) and other behaviours during
the participants’ ideation process in this study as well. Furthermore, the
completed segments from the observations were categorized by two people,
one researcher and a coder who was provided with a behavioural record that
had been segmented. Each segment categorized and coded by the coder was
compared to the researcher’s, evaluated for inter-coder reliability,
calculating an average rating of 92% agreement.
TABLE 2. Behaviour coding scheme
Behaviour (code) Definition
Analyzing problem (AP) Reading task exposition provided by the experimenter;
understanding and analyzing problems; defining what the
problem really is; exploring requirements and constraints
Generating ideas (GI) Writing down ideas to be used later; developing possible ideas
for a solution; listing different alternatives
Reading own keywords (ROK) Reading a keyword written by himself
Looking at own sketches (LOS) Looking at a sketch drawn by himself
Looking at relevant information Looking at information that searched or retrieved by himself
(LRI)
Deciding conception (DC) Selecting or composing ideas among alternatives; combining
ideas generated from their mind
Searching-retrieving information Searching for information in the reference material for
capturing ideas; pasting memo stickers on reference; retrieving
(S-R) information on-line for capturing ideas; saving information in
hard disc
Gathering information they Gathering relevant information searched for; arranging relevant
searched for or retrieved (GISR) pictures or information and printing them out
Creating new sketches (CNS) Creating a new picture, label or arrow
Continuing to sketch (CS) Continuing to work on a sketch by drawing a picture, label or
arrow

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3. Results and Discussion
This study conducted in-situ observation mainly for research the two
participants’ behavioural flow and find the linkage between the
searched content and the transformed ideas in their ideation processes.
Analyses therefore concentrated on the behaviours that occurred to the
participants and the content they were searching for and their
sketching in this experiment, including the order of all their
behaviours and the linkage between the searched content and sketches.
3.1. THE PRESENTING ORDER OF ALL BEHAVIOURS IN IDEATION FLOW
The flowchart of the two participants’ behaviours that occurred in their
ideation process are shown in Figure 3, as well as presented as a timeframe
of all behaviours that occurred during their tasks. At the same time, this
figure also indicates the order of ten kinds of behavioural codes that
appeared during their ideation flow. Black and white dotted lines are utilized
to connect the behaviours in sequence for easier recognition of the order of
all behaviours of participants A and B. Therefore, all behaviours of
participant A in order are AP, S-R, GISR, S-R, GISR, S-R, GISR, GI, GISR,
GI, LRI, GI, S-R, GI, DC, CNS, S-R, CNS, S-R, DC, S-R, CS, S-R, LOS,
CNS, GI, CNS, DC, CNS, CS, S-R and CS, while all participant B’s
behaviours in order are: AP, S-R, GI, LRI, GI, S-R, CNS, S-R, CNS, S-R,
CNS, GI, CS, CNS, LRI, CS, LOS, CNS, LOS, DC and CS. Additionally,
the four black squares with white horizontal lines between the 33rd to the
38th minutes of participant A’s ideation flow means the presenting timescale
of the participant’s four behaviours were overlapping in this period which
cannot be separated by the method of observation in this study.
In terms of the connective relationship among the behaviours, the study
found a similar order of a stream of behaviours appears in the two
participants’ ideation flow. In other words, we obtained some noticeable
stages of behavioural connection within their designing by analyzing the
experimental data. Firstly, there is only an obvious AP behaviour in the first
stage which shows both of them analyzed the design problem in the
beginning of the task. The first part of the second stage is a set of
behavioural connections in which the S-R, GI and LRI behaviours appear by
turns from about the 1st to the 30th minute of participant A’s ideation flow
and from about the 2nd to the 8th minute of participant B’s. The second part
of the second stage is also a set of behavioural connections in which the S-R,
CNS and CS behaviours are presented by turns from about the 32nd to the
38th minute of participant A’s ideation flow and from about the 8th to the
19th minute of participant B’s. The last stage is a set of behavioural
connections as well in which the LOS, CNS and CS behaviour are presented

6. 6 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
by turns from about the 38th to the 65th minute of participant A’s ideation
process and from the about 19th to the 56th minute of participant B’s.
Figure 3. The behavioural flow of participant A and B
The three stages of the two participants’ behavioural flow in their
ideation process is shown in Table 3 and interpreted as follows. First of all,
in the first stage both participants are reading the task exposition to analyze
the design problem they confronted in which they are appearing to exhibit
chiefly analyzing behaviour. For this reason, the “analyzing stage”
absolutely is the term of this period. The timescale of this stage is the
shortest of the four stages, and took only about 1 minute to 2 minutes of
participant A’s and B’s ideation time respectively.
Then participant A started to retrieve relevant information on-line and
printed the visual data out as the reference material to write down the
keywords as the ideas they were generating in the first part of the second
stage. Participant B exhibited the same behaviour to record a few keywords
in this period as well. Thus, the main behaviour they are presenting in this
period is searching-retrieving for generating ideas (S-R for GI). After the
first part of the second stage, participant A searched for some visual
information from a reference book mainly to create new sketches. At the
same part of this stage, participant B was retrieving visual information on-
line through keying in some keywords to create new representations similar
to participant A’s intention. In particular, a large number of sketches were
done by the two participants in this period: participant A created 11 sketches
and participant B 16. Therefore, the chief behaviour they are showing in the
second part of the second stage is searching-retrieving for creating new
sketches (S-R for CNS). However, the major intention of the two
participants in the first and second parts of the stage is forming the
conceptualization to solve the design problem through the connections
between S-R behaviour and GI behaviour and between S-R behaviour and

7. 7
CNS behaviour. The two parts therefore are combined as the
“conceptualizing stage” in this study.
Lastly, both participants seemed to revise and adjust the sketches, adding
some elements to the previous figures or drawing clear-cut outlines of the
previous designs they accomplished in the previous stage. Therefore, the
stage is called the “visualizing stage” in this study since the major intention
of the two participants is visualizing the design solution specifically.
However, the major difference between participant A and B is the use of
drawing tools while they are sketching in this period. That is, participant A
was drawing the previous designs which were done on paper by the
computer graphic program instead with the traditional tool, pencil, which
was utilized by participant B in the third stage.
TABLE 3. Three behavioural stages of the participant A’s and B’s ideation flow
Conceptualizing stage
Stage Analyzing stage Visualizing stage
S-R for GI S-R for CNS
Connective
AP S-R, GI and LRI S-R, CNS and CS LOS, CNS and CS
codes
0 ~1st minute 1st ~ 30th minute 32nd ~ 38th minute 38th ~ 65th minute
Participant A
0 ~2nd minute 2nd ~ 8th minute 8th ~ 19th minute 19th ~ 56th minute
Participant B
3.2. THE LINKAGE BETWEEN THE SEARCHED CONTENT AND SKETCHES
In order to find the linkage relationship between the content they were
searching for and the content they were sketching in the ideation process this
study merely analyzed the experimental data of the “conceptualizing stage”
of the two participants to trace the linkage between the type of visual stimuli
and the transformation of ideas in which they presented the S-R behaviour.
That is, the periods were from about the 1st to the 40th minute of participant

8. 8 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
A’s designing and from about the 2nd to the 20th minute of participant B’s
designing.
The searched or retrieved content and sketches of the two participants in
their ideation process are shown in Figure 4. The red dotted arrows with
digits in Figure 4 show the order that the two participants carried out the
sketches in the period. We also place the pictures outside the participants’
main sketches in sequence through examining the searched or retrieved
content in the experimental data.
The study examined the situation of participant A’s “conceptualizing
stage” and interpreted it in sequence as follows. In the beginning of the “S-R
for GI” duration of her conceptualizing stage, she keyed in six keywords to
retrieve some information on-line in order to generate ideas, which included
the gymkhana mark, Olympic mark, disabled-people icon, disabled-people,
competitiveness and Paralympics. Then she wrote down twenty-seven
keywords on a piece of paper as the ideas were utilized later on, like “heart”,
“wheel chair”, “people”, “sun”, “colored ribbons”, “sport”, “flag”, “circle”,
“rainbow” and so on. After that, she started to search for some visual stimuli
from a reference book and pasted memory stickers on the targets she needed
as reference materials. And then, she continued by writing down five
keywords which include “wings”, “lines”, “colorful”, “silhouette” and
“movement”.
Next, she simultaneously drew some sketches as the first arrow shows
and referred to the visual stimuli she had marked after having pasted
memory stickers by or by looking at the keywords she has written down
before. This period therefore transferred “S-R for GI” into “S-R for CNS” at
this point. However, the four sketches obviously were influenced by the
keywords, such as “heart”, “wheel chair”, “people” and “sun”. Then she did
another three designs by referring to an abstract form as the picture shows
which is placed to the left of the second arrow. We then found the three
sketches that participant A had done differed from the others from which we
conjecture that she was inspired by the abstract form. After that, she
accomplished another three sketches by referring to the left picture near the
third arrow, which includes figures of people, a running person and several
circles, and the ideas she has used in the figures of the first arrow.
Subsequently, she finished the two sketches below by referring to the picture
near by the fourth arrow. She obviously combined a moving figure and the
archery. Following this, she added wings on the first sketch which resulted
in the picture below the fifth arrow. Then she added a square with three
figures beneath on the fourth sketch of the first line that was influenced by
the picture above the all the sketches. Lastly, she added a semicircle above
the third sketch of the third line that was affected by the keyword, “rainbow”.
However, we also traced the participant B’s “conceptualizing stage” and
describe it as follows. During the beginning of the “S-R for GI” period of

9. 9
her conceptualizing stage, she keyed in “defectives” and “gymkhana” to
retrieve some information on-line to generate ideas. Then she wrote down
eight keywords on a piece of paper like “gymkhana”, “a relay baton”,
“activity”, “people”, “posture”, “torch”, “moving” and “circle”. After that,
she started to draw an incomplete sketch.
Afterward she started to draw a more complete sketch as the first arrow
shows accompanied with S-R behaviour and referred to the marks of
defective and Paralympics on-line. This period therefore transferred “S-R for
GI” into “S-R for CNS” at this point. After this, she carried out the second
and third sketches by referring to the two abstract figures as the picture
shows that are placed to the left of the third arrow. And we also found the
sketch as the third arrow directs is different from previous sketches from
which we may conjecture that she was inspired by the two abstract forms.
After that, she carried out the fourth sketch which is composed of the third
sketch and a heart figure. Then she tried to transfer the form of the fourth
sketch into the fifth sketch by adjusting the position of the heart figure.
Subsequently, she carried out the sixth sketch by changing the colored
ribbon of the previous sketch to the fire form by referring to the keyword she
has written down, “torch”. And then, she tried to draw some new sketches
indicated by the seventh and the eighth arrows which were affected by the
keyword, “laurel”. Then she gave up the idea of laurel and kept on adjusting
or revising the sixth sketch into another two sketches which are indicated by
as the ninth arrow. Lastly, she accomplished a mark through clearly drawing
the outline of the figure as the tenth arrow shows and adding black tone to it.
3.3. DISCUSSIONS
By analyzing the observed data in this study, the designer’s behavioural flow
in the ideation process is divided into three main stages between the problem
input and the solution output. These stages are the “analyzing stage”,
“conceptualizing stage” and “visualizing stage” (see Figure 5). Moreover,
the “conceptualizing stage” includes the period of “S-R for GI” and “S-R for
CNS”, in which the designer’s behaviour may represent the interactive
structure of “seeing-moving-seeing” (Schön and Wiggins 1992).
However, the study found three major differences in the whole ideation
process between participant A and B. Firstly, in their task, participant A with
seven years of experience, spent more time on searching for relevant visual
stimuli to generate ideas than participant B who has only two years of
experience. The S-R behaviour frequently appeared from about the 1st to the
40th minute of the participant A’s designing, but appeared only at the 20th
minute of participant B’s designing. However, participant B spent more time
on sketching new ideas or continually sketching than did participant A in
their task. Second, participant A got ideas not only through searching for
information from several reference books but also by retrieving data on-line

10. 10 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
while participant B merely retrieved relevant visual stimuli on-line during
her ideation process. Last, participant A tended to generate new ideas by
referring to the reference materials she had searched for, but participant B
seemed to create new sketches after referring to the previous sketches she
had done.
Participant The participant’s searched or retrieved content and sketches
Keywords:
Heart, Wheel Chair,
People and Sun
Keywords
Rainbow
A
B
Keywords: Torch,
Laurel
Figure 4. The participant’s searched or retrieved content and sketches

11. 11
Moreover, two phenomena could be drawn in the observation of the “S-R
for GI” period and the “S-R for CNS” period. First, the two designers tend to
generate more different directions for ideas in the “S-R for GI” period than
in the “S-R for CNS” period. However, the designers combined different
ideas or combined them with their imagination in the “S-R for CNS” period.
Therefore, we connect this part of the results with the three main stages in
the designer’s ideation process as shown in the model in Figure 5. Second,
the designers drew all sketches on paper as the ideas they generated in
different timescales in their ideation process. They also adjusted or revised
the previous sketches they had done to form a complete idea after the
designers searched for or retrieved new information that made them reflect
more. Their sketches were continually changing as a result of different
thoughts and new searched content of designers in different periods. The
phenomenon serves to verify Tang’s assertion (2003) that sketches play a
role to connect a previous design stage to a present one which may cause the
designer continuing his/her unfinished ideas or shape the previous design
into a better one.
In terms of the linkage relationship of the searched content or the written
keywords and the condition of the designer’s idea transforming, we found
that the visual stimuli with more concrete features that the designer found
were utilized to combine with others to form a complete idea. However, the
visual stimuli with more abstract features seemed to be combined with the
designer’s imagination to form some different ideas that differed from the
previous ideas. Therefore, we adopted Gero and Kannengiesser’s interaction
of three worlds (2004) to interpret this part of the results in this study. That
is, the designers start to find some reference for gaining ideas to solve the
problem since they faced a design problem. At the same time, they try to
imagine what will be needed in their “expected world” to present the
searching-retrieving (S-R) behaviour in their “external world”. Once the
reference they found has the concrete feature sought after it will be
combined together to form an idea through the designers’ interpretation in
their “interpreted world” that interacts with their “external world”, in which
the individual reference may be treated as a component that is assembled
with others to be a whole. On the other hand, the reference they found that
has an abstract feature will be immersed in designers’ “expected world” that
is then combined with their imagination to form a different idea, in which
the individual reference may be like a tractor for drawing out the designers’
memory, experience or knowledge to interact with the abstract reference to
create a new one. Therefore, the previous discussion also could explain why
designers tend to develop similar ideas when the reference materials they
searched for were more concrete. On the contrary, abstract visual stimuli

12. 12 P. J. CHENG, J. YEN AND M. YOU
seem to give designers more different kinds of perspectives to form a greater
diversity of ideas than the concrete visual stimuli produced.
Figure 5. The model of designer’s behavioural flow in the ideation process
4. Conclusions
This study utilized in-situ observation to examine two professional
designers’ ideation process. From our results we propose a model for
illustrating the designer’s behavioural flow in the ideation process. Four
main findings in the study were: first, the designers’ behavioural flow in the
ideation process is divided into three main stages between the problem input
and the solution output, that is, the “analyzing stage”, the “conceptualizing
stage” and the “visualizing stage”, and the “conceptualizing stage” includes
the duration of “S-R for GI” and “S-R for CNS”. Second, the designers tend
to generate more different directions of ideas in the “S-R for GI” period and
combine different ideas or combine them with their imagination in the “S-R
for CNS” period. Third, the visual stimuli with more concrete features that
designers found was utilized to combine with others to form a complete idea
while the visual stimuli with more abstract features seem to be combined
with the designer’s imagination to form some ideas that differed from the
previous ideas. Fourth, designers tend to develop similar ideas when the
references they searched for were more concrete. On the contrary, the
abstract visual stimuli seem to give designers more different kinds of
perspectives to form a greater diversity of ideas than the concrete visual
stimuli did.
Finally, there are some restrictions and insufficiencies during our
research that we should revise in any further study. They include the number
of the participants and the results through in-situ observation are the
limitations in this study. For the number of the participants, the research may
be regarded as a pilot study for proposing an analytical method to the related

13. 13
research in the design field. However, it is still insufficient to interpret the
deep linkage relationship between the searched content and the transformed
ideas in designer’s ideation flow merely through the method of in-situ
observation. Therefore, other possible methods should be utilized as future
studies.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research provided by the
National Science Council under Grants No. NSC-96-2411-H-224-006. The authors
also wish to thank the two professional designers who performed the designed task
in this study, Xin-Yi Yu and Li-Lin Zhou.
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