Elsevier

Design Studies

Volume 84, January 2023, 101148
Design Studies

Design science and neuroscience: A systematic review of the emergent field of Design Neurocognition

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2022.101148Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Design Neurocognition aims to elucidate the “black-box” of a designer's mind through the use of brain imaging tools.

  • In our systematically review, we identify 82 publications and provide an overview of nine main research topics that have been studied.

  • We uncover a large variety of methodological approaches that currently hamper the evaluation of research findings through meta-analysis.

  • Finally, we provide recommendations to advance the field of Design Neurocognition.

Design Neurocognition is an emerging research field that aims to elucidate the “black-box” of a designer's mind through the use of brain imaging tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). More than a decade worth of study has led to many interesting research findings. Here, we systematically review the existing literature in the field. We identify 82 publications and provide an overview of nine main research topics that have been studied. We uncover a large variety of methodological approaches that currently hamper the evaluation of research findings through meta-analysis. Finally, we provide recommendations to advance the field and collaboratively generate a more complete understanding of human behavior during design activities.

Section snippets

Search strategy

We conducted a systematic literature search following PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021). We utilized PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar as search databases and additionally checked the reference lists of the selected articles for further relevant publications. Our search query combined (1) a set of Design Science terminologies that are particularly relevant for the emerging field of Design Neurocognition, and (2) a set of terminologies describing commonly used brain imaging and brain

Development of the field

We identified a total of 82 publications that are relevant for this review. In Table 2 (see Supplementary Material), we provide a summary of each publication including author(s), name of journal/conference, title, research topic, description of the experimental task, brain imaging method, number of participants, and study population (e.g., level of expertise). When inspecting the titles of journals and conferences, we observed that contributions targeted either the Design Science or

Discussion

In this paper, we systematically reviewed the existing literature in the emerging field of Design Neurocognition following the standardized PRISMA guidelines. We included literature that assessed brain function during design activities (i.e., while designing) and excluded research focusing on external design assessment (e.g., customer/stakeholder decision on a design outcome). We identified a total of 82 publications that met the inclusion criteria of our systematic review. The review

Conclusion

This systematic literature review provided an overview of the existing research in the emerging field of Design Neurocognition. The advances have been mainly driven by two research communities, Design Science and Neuroscience. We identified nine research topics (i.e., designing versus problem-solving, psychophysiology, stages of the design process, design methods and tools, design training and experience, specific design activities, design interventions, algorithmic predictions, and team

Funding

This work was supported by a Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program Grant and a gift from the Kelvin Foundation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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