Some phenomena of problem decomposition strategy for design thinking: differences between novices and experts

Abstract Previous studies indicate that expert scientists use working-forward strategies to solve well-structured scientific problems, while novices use working-backward ones. Although design problems are mostly ill-structured, it was found that designers often decompose an ill-structured design problem into well-structured subproblems. However, little study has focused on the designer's search strategies in dealing with well-structured design subproblems. The research method adopted is protocol analysis. The results suggest that an obvious difference between experts and novices is their problem-decomposing strategies. Experts' explicit problem-decomposing strategies are important factors in design efficiency.