Investigating the Cognitive Effects of Design Communication in Digital Media on Industrial Designers  

 

The design process can essentially be defined as a problem-solving activity, where the designer creates a communication process by sharing their ideas and knowledge with themselves and others through various media (environments). When communication is defined as “the process of conveying information through a medium,” the intersection of the fields of design and communication emerges. Communication theories suggest that the environments in which communication takes place and the tools used influence cognitive processes. From a design perspective, these environments can affect the development of the designer’s creative ideas and how the process unfolds in various ways. This paper examines industrial design as a communicative process evaluated from the perspective of cognitive theories, and investigates the cognitive effects of design communication in digital environments on designers through semi-structured interviews with 9 industrial designers. According to the research findings, digital environments have a largely positive cognitive effect on designers. These cognitive effects can be expressed under 12 codes, categorized as alternative generation, creative thinking, problem solving, decision-making, collective thinking, critical thinking, attention and focus, 3D thinking, problem definition, knowledge generation, and memory, all classified under the broader categories of thinking, perception, learning, and knowing.