Computational Design: Technology, Cognition and Environments

Description

New computational design tools have evolved rapidly and been increasingly applied in the field of design in recent years, complimenting and even replacing the traditional design media and approaches. Design as both the process and product are changing due to the emergence and adoption of these new technologies. Understanding and assessing the impact of these new computational design environments on design and designers is important for advancing design in the contemporary context. Do these new computational environments support or hinder design creativity? How do those tools facilitate designers’ thinking? Such knowledge is also important for the future development of design technologies. Research shows that design is never a mysterious non-understandable process, for example, one general view is that design process shares a common analysis-synthesis-evaluation model, during which designers interact between design problem and solution spaces. Understanding designers’ thinking in different environments is the key to design research, education and practice. This book focuses on emerging computational design environments, whose impact on design and designers have not been comprehensively and systematically studied. It comprises three parts. The history and recent developments of computational design technologies are introduced in Part I. The main categories of technologies cover from computer-aided drafting and modelling tools, to visual programming and scripting tools for algorithmic design, to advanced interfaces and platforms for interactions between designers, between designers and computers, and between the virtual environment and the physical reality. To critically explore design thinking, especially in these new computational design environments, formal approaches to studying design thinking and design cognition are introduced and compared in Part II, drawing on literature and studies from the 70s to the current era. Part III concludes the book by exploring the impact of different computational design technologies on design and designers, using a series of case studies conducted by the author team building on their close collaboration over the past five years. The book offers new insights into designers’ thinking in the rapidly evolving computational design environments, which have not been critically and systematically studied and reported in the current literature. The book is meant for design researchers, educators and students, professional practitioners and consultants, as well as people who are interested in computational design in general. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Acknowledgements Preface Contents 1. Introduction 1.1. Computational design 1.2. Design technology, cognition and design environment 1.3. Summary of chapters 1.4. Context for the book 2. Emergent Technologies in Computational Design 2.1. Introduction 2.1.1. History of CAD 2.1.2. Evolution of digital modelling devices 2.1.3. Evolution of CAD software and hardware 2.2. Parametric and generative design 2.2.1. Key concepts and characteristics of generative design 2.2.2. Major generative design systems 2.2.3. Key concepts in parametric design 2.2.4. History and application of parametric design 2.3. Presence and telepresence, virtual and real worlds 2.3.1. Telepresence 2.3.2. Augmented Reality 2.3.3. Virtual Reality 2.4. Conclusion 3. Understanding Design Cognition in Computational and Generative Design 3.1. Design cognition 3.1.1. Design thinking 3.1.2. Design problems and design solutions 3.1.3. Design creativity 3.2. Formal approaches to studying design cognition 3.2.1. Protocol analysis 3.2.2. Biometric approaches to studying design cognition 3.3. Design cognition in the computational design environment 3.3.1. Computational thinking and design thinking 3.3.2. Design cognition in the computational environment 3.3.3. Design cognition in the Parametric Design Environment (PDE) 3.4. Conclusion 4. Cognitive Impacts and Computational Design Environments 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Case study 1: Designers’ behaviour in parametric and geometric design environments 4.2.1. Research design 4.2.2. Result 1: Design issues and processes 4.2.3. Result 2: Designers’ cognitive effort 4.2.4. Result 3: Design patterns 4.2.5. Result 4: Co-evolution process in parametric design 4.3. Case study 2: Cognitive studies of design collaboration in a virtual environment 4.3.1. Collaborative design studies and technologies 4.3.2. Experiments and coding scheme 4.3.3. Protocol analysis results and discussion 4.4. Case study 3: A biometric approach to analysing cognitive behaviour in a CAD environment 4.4.1. Experiment 4.4.2. Results 4.5. Case study 4: Implementing rules in design, using generative design grammars 4.5.1. Design grammars 4.5.2. The conceptual framework of generative design grammars 4.5.3. Design rules 4.5.4. Designing a virtual gallery 4.6. Case study 5.1: Generating new design instances of an existing style using computational analysis 4.6.1. Stage 1: Syntactical derivation 4.6.2. Stage 2: Parametric generation 4.6.3. Stage 3: Fractal analysis 4.7. Case study 5.2: Transparency and mystery in traditional Chinese private gardens 4.7.1. Pedestrian accessibility convex map analysis 4.7.2. Visual accessibility based isovist analysis 4.7.3. Hypothesis framing 4.7.4. Exploration of Yuyuan Garden’s transparency and mystery 4.8. Case study 6: Creativity in a parametric design environment 4.8.1. Research design 4.8.2. Analysis of results 4.9. Conclusion 5. Conclusion 5.1. A conceptual model 5.2. Looking into the future of computational design 5.2.1. Design technology: Implications and future developments 5.2.2. Design cognition: Implications and future developments 5.2.3. Design environment: Implications and future developments 5.3. Conclusion Appendix: Coding Example for Case Study 1 Appendix of Images Sources Index