Mapping between design activities and external representations for engineering student designers

Many design researchers have attempted to characterize design through the different activities the designer exhibits, such as problem framing, solution generation, and evaluating alternative solutions. Others have documented the way that sketching supports design. This study combines these approaches to understanding design by exploring the interplay between designers' representations and their design activities in a set of four case studies. We analyzed verbal protocols collected from two senior and two freshman engineering students. The four students exemplify the significant design activity findings from a previous study. In this paper, we present the results from the analysis of the four design protocols, focusing on the relationship between representation and design activity, and on differences between the freshmen and seniors in our sample in the way that they make and use design sketches. We discuss these findings with a focus on improving design education.