Abstract
While design methods are a crucial aspect of design research, education, and practice, our understanding of how they work and what shapes their performance remains limited. To address this, this paper reports on a theory-building effort, outlining core aspects of the phenomenon of method usage in design. Following recent calls for grounding design research in cognitive science, it frames method usage as a cognitive process and integrates cognitive load theory and dual-process theory to describe central relationships between the design method, the method user, and the context of usage. The paper concludes by highlighting that method performance emerges from these interactions and by reminding us that design methods themselves do not perform—the method user do. Consequently, method performance should not only be assessed based on output, but its ability to foster effective design practices in the method user.
Keywords
Design Methods, Cognitive Science, Theory-Building
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.529
Citation
Lavrsen, J.C. (2026) Design Methods as Cognitive Tools: Understanding Method Usage through Cognitive Theories, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.529
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Design Methods as Cognitive Tools: Understanding Method Usage through Cognitive Theories
While design methods are a crucial aspect of design research, education, and practice, our understanding of how they work and what shapes their performance remains limited. To address this, this paper reports on a theory-building effort, outlining core aspects of the phenomenon of method usage in design. Following recent calls for grounding design research in cognitive science, it frames method usage as a cognitive process and integrates cognitive load theory and dual-process theory to describe central relationships between the design method, the method user, and the context of usage. The paper concludes by highlighting that method performance emerges from these interactions and by reminding us that design methods themselves do not perform—the method user do. Consequently, method performance should not only be assessed based on output, but its ability to foster effective design practices in the method user.