In this section, the author describes the details about how to design the experiment and how to conduct the experiment. They are involved the subjects choosing, two phases of experiment, the design topic of experiment, design tools, the recorded methods and the limitation of the experiment.
3.1.1. Choosing Subjects
The object of research tries to understand analogical thinking process in design domain and explore how designers transfer of concepts from one field to another. Accomplishing the process should possess abilities which are abundant creativities and expertise in architecture design. Therefore, the author selects sex expert designers who have more than five years of design-based education. All of them are proficient at conventional media and computer simultaneously. They use one or more computer applications frequently when they generate their designs.
However, every designer has different design method and thinking. Even though these subjects have professional design experience, it does not mean that all of them could design with analogical thinking. The short warm-up experiment could not prove effectively that the chosen subjects are suitable for designing with analogical thinking. In order to make sure that the experimental results are worth discussing, six subjects participate in the phase one of experiment and then the author measure the experimental results based on the following basic analogy theories (Novick,1988; Genter, 1983; Holyak and Thagard,1996; Goldschmidt; 1995).
If any subject’s design does not achieve any one of the two theories, he or she is unable to go on the next phase.
1. Analogical thinking is a process form source to target.
2. The positive use of analogical transfer is that the features shared by the source and target are structural. In contrast, when the source and target analogy shares only objects attributes transfer, it is often negative transfer.
Finally, three of these subjects cannot accomplish the objects. One subject indicates that he could not think with analogical transfer to design. Experimental results of two other subjects show only objects attributes in their design.
3.1.2. Two phases of experiment
When the researchers discuss the analogical transfer, most of them mention the relationship between analogy and sketching. The author tries to comprehend the analogy in design domain deeply and understand the analogical thinking process in different media. However, every subject has different design thinking and method. The only way to judge the comparison between analogical thinking using conventional media and computer fairly is that let the subjects participate in two experiments using different media. Thus, the experiment has two phases. The phase one is a design assignment using conventional media and the phase two is
the other design assignment using computer with similar topic. Two phases have an interval of one month.
3.1.3. Brief interview
After every phase of design assignment, a brief interview would help the author understand the design process accurately. The analogical thinking is too complicated process to understand only by visual data. When the subjects remain memory, they are requested to describe the design process, and then some specific questions are asked by the authors. The brief interview is about fifteen to twenty minutes.
3.1.4. Experimental topic
Every analogical thinking process involves source and target (Genter, 1983; Holyak and ThaGard,1996; Goldschmidt; 1995). Thinking in terms of analogy involves the transfer of prior knowledge from a familiar situation (named the source), to a situation that should be elucidated (named the target) (Gentner 1983; Novick 1988). The identification and retrieval of a similarity between potential relations in the target, and known relations in the source enables to understand the new situation on the basis of a familiar situation.In design domain, the source means that something inspires the design idea and the target signifies the design purpose. This experiment is the short time design assignment and subjects must finish their conceptual design within restricted time. Also, the source and target are not the main research goal in the study. In order to achieving the experimental purpose in limited time, the design ideas and the design purpose are bounded by particular resource and one topic.
The sources of analogy are various, such as structural, mechanical, plant, animal, society, etc, but the organic analogy is one of the most widely discussed issue in design domain (Couceiro, 2005; Do and Cross, 1995; Gero, 2006). Therefore, the author selects two organisms that the subjects maybe know but not really familiar with, and offer them the reference materials to them to build their knowledge background.
In addition, the design purposes cannot choose traditional topics that are too easy to design, but complex topics also are not a good selection to quick designs. Therefore, novel topics have simple function that it is easy to handle and has much space to be developed. Finally, the author decide the first design topic in the phase one is “a roadside stall design which inspired by the concept of the jellyfish.” The second design topic on the phase two is “transient living space which inspired by the concept of the sponge.”
3.1.5. Building background knowledge
In order to avoid the surface analogy (Gentner, 1983), the author offers a material to build the subject’s background knowledge before the beginning of every design assignment. The material containing text and graphics have explicit introduction about two design sources
“jellyfish” and “sponge”. All kinds of knowledge about the sources are listed to improve efficiency of obtaining information from the material. Subjects have ten minutes to read the material before generating their design. When they start developing their design, they still can skim the material at any time they need.
3.1.6. Experimental tools
The subjects are requested to use their habitual tools in the two phases of experiment that make them generate their concept as usual. In phase one, the author asks the subjects to prepare the conventional tools that they use habitually. In the phase two, it also does not limit what kinds of applications the subjects use. The author arranges for all applications that the subjects need, such as 3Ds max, Maya, Sketch up and FormZ. Besides, the author prepares the AMD Turion 64 Mobile notebook with 15.4 inch monitor, keyboard and mouse.
3.1.7. Experimental time and recorded methods
Because the subjects generate their conceptual design in recorded circumstance, the experimental time could not be too long. Subjects generating conceptual design in experiment phase one is about forty minuets. The pilot experiment shows that when designer generating their design with computer is more time consuming than conventional media, so the design assignment in the phase two is about one hour. If subjects think the time is not enough to complete their design concept, ten minutes could be prolonged. In addition, the whole processes are recorded by video. For the unease of getting visual data, the author takes a photo with digital camera per minute.
Fig 3.1.7.a the experimental environment and recorded methods
3.1.8. Limitation
Analogy has the various types, different levels, and diverse resources, but this study is only aimed at organic analogy as the experimental topic. Because the author focuses on the analogical thinking process, much variability would disturb the objectives of the research.
Therefore, the author has to choose one kinds of analogical transfer that must be the limitation of this study. On the other hand, it is difficult to find expert designers who proficient at conventional media and computer simultaneously, but too few experimental data are unconvincing. Ultimately, the author chooses experimental result of five subjects to be the analytical data of the study.