The in-depth cognitive levels of imagination of artisans and designers

This paper investigated the in-depth cognitive levels of artisans (craft artisans) and designers (design trainers) as they observed design problems (in the early stage of idea generation) during design training. A concept network method based on the associative concept dictionary was employed to extract the verbalised thoughts of four artisans and four designers. We then identified semantic relationships based on a factor analysis. We discovered that, in contrast to designers, artisans tended to activate lower in-depth cognitive levels. Our study demonstrated that artisans placed greater focus on product appearance and technical aspects, such as operation (replace, reduce, etc.) and shape (waist, body, etc.). In contrast, designers paid greater attention to the presence of issues related to surroundings, such as scene (silverware, norm, etc.) and appeal (fresh, dish, etc.). These results demonstrate that closely or remotely associated concepts correlate with shallow or in-depth cognitive levels based on creative solutions.

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