A study on comparing design behaviors of experts and novices in the design process

The importance of design is increasing in many industries. The design process could dominate the outcome of the design to some extent. It is obvious that expert and novice designers work in different ways and also have varied behaviors during the design process. In order to have a better understanding of how they behave during the design process, the objective of this paper is to explore the differences in their behaviors. The study adopted a protocol method to examine the sequence of the design phase and design activity, along with
the time spent and the occurrences. The results are revealed by protocol analysis with sequence maps, and quantitative data. It should be noted that although the paths of experts and novices were both iterative, they were executed in different ways. Additionally, experts could spend more time than novices on the Design phase because they could evaluate the problems precisely based on their experience and knowledge. The outcomes of this paper provide new insights for not only designers themselves but also educators and team managers of companies.