The impact of designers' goals on design-by-analogy

Selection of source is an important step in design-by-analogy. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of designers' goals for source selection on analogical design outcome. Participants consist of 130 architecture students involved in a design-by-analogy practice. The results indicate that there are significant relations between designers' goals and the type of selected source, similarity between source and target, and novelty of the design ideas. Moreover, the findings indicate that goals of function, climate response, and symbolism improve the similarity between source and target and novelty of ideas; while goals of familiarity, aesthetics, and economy of time hinder them. We conclude that design expertise can enhance students' ability in analogical design with an impact on their goals.