An Overview of Design Cognition between Experts and Novices

Experimental studies in design are often done using novice design engineers such as students as test subjects. In this paper, we attempt to determine differences in cognition skills between expert and novice design engineers, in order to determine the utility and validity of using students as experimental test subjects in design science research. A classification is developed based on a literature review. It is found that the cognitive strategies, processes and representations are noticeably dissimilar between experts and novices. Given these observations, data collected using student samples can only be cautiously generalized to the larger design engineer population.