Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to examine the relation between design and cognition in light of two aspects related to these disciplines: (a) Cognitive science’s negative attitude toward artifacts. (b) The fact that artifacts are the subject matter and end product of design. In our paper we firstly discuss cognitive science’s attitude toward artifacts and show that it contradicts the reflective-interaction approach that currently dominates the discipline of design. We then introduce SIRN (Synergetic inter-Representation Networks) as an approach that resolves this contradiction by treating artifacts and their design as innately related to cognition. We close the paper by discussing further research directions.

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Sep 5th, 12:00 AM

SIRN (Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks): an approach to design

Our aim in this paper is to examine the relation between design and cognition in light of two aspects related to these disciplines: (a) Cognitive science’s negative attitude toward artifacts. (b) The fact that artifacts are the subject matter and end product of design. In our paper we firstly discuss cognitive science’s attitude toward artifacts and show that it contradicts the reflective-interaction approach that currently dominates the discipline of design. We then introduce SIRN (Synergetic inter-Representation Networks) as an approach that resolves this contradiction by treating artifacts and their design as innately related to cognition. We close the paper by discussing further research directions.

 

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