Applying Cognitive Operations in Collaborative Apparel Design Process

One of the most important issues in design process is the cognitive process designers undertake (Stempfle & Badke-Schaub, 2002). Design students often lack in communicating their cognitive process and do not effectively work in a group setting (Muhammad & Ha-Brookshire, 2011; Romeo & Lee, 2013). Analyzing the thinking and reasoning process of designers, particularly in collaboration, is a difficult task since there are not direct measures to inspect a designers’ thinking process. Teams can provide more complex, innovative, and comprehensive solutions to problems, but the cause of teams’ failures may be great due to poor planning or breakdown in internal team processes (Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to apply the content-and process-directed activity model (CPDAM) proposed by Stemplfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) to a collaborative apparel design project.