Designers’ search for relevant knowledge and the emergence of design innovation

Abstract

This is a further development of work related to the study of design knowledge and how this knowledge contributes to the development of design expertise. The intention of this work was to illustrate how designers – novice and experts search for the relevant knowledge within the design domain and how this knowledge contributes to the design of innovative devices. Therefore the main trust of this paper is to explore the above within the product design domain. Therefore, the current research identified the differences and similarities between novice and expert designers’ search. It also identified where and how that knowledge contributed to the emergence of an innovative design outcome. Novice and expert search has been integrated into the relevant models.